


The Mage's Assistant

by pastelkanan



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Confessions, Developing Relationship, Drinking, Fae & Fairies, Familiar Armin, Ghosts, Love Confessions, M/M, Mage Eren, Mages, Magic, Self-Reflection, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-03-01 01:45:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13284324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelkanan/pseuds/pastelkanan
Summary: Jean wasn't sure what he expected when he applied to be a mage's assistant. As it turned out, living with Eren Jäeger, mage of Shiganshina, was a bit more exciting than he had thought it would be.





	1. Help Wanted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean meets Eren. Was this really a good idea?

   Jean looked up from the  _ help wanted _ flier he held in his hands to the tower that rose up in front of him. Yeah, this looked like a mage’s place. It was rare to find mages in small towns like this, considering that they made most of their money in large cities and could charge travel fees if they had to head out of the city to the job they were hired for. Shiganshina was in the middle of nowhere, a solid day’s horse ride from the nearest town. Maybe that made it special; he couldn’t say he particularly cared about the town, though. He was just here looking for work. He had been traveling from town to town, city to city looking for work ever since he turned sixteen and left Trost. After what happened there, he knew he’d never be able to stay. 

   Being a traveler wasn’t so bad. It got a little rough sometimes, mostly when he couldn’t find work because nobody wanted to hire a drifter, but he enjoyed it more than he ever would have enjoyed the streets of Trost. He had stumbled upon Shiganshina by accident. He had heard rumor in the nearest town, someone saying that Shiganshina’s resident mage was looking for an assistant again after the last one… well, you know. 

   Jean didn’t know, actually, but it didn’t sound good. 

   Still, he needed work. His money was running dangerously low and winter was approaching. If he didn’t get a job that would carry him through the winter, he’d probably starve and/or freeze to death, neither of which sounded very appealing. He had picked up the flier he carried at a little stand in the center of town. The stand was being run by a woman, a seemingly ditzy girl with brown hair and no particular motivation in life. The sign hanging over the front of the stand proudly proclaimed that it would help anyone find work in their good town, so he had stopped to ask about the mage. The girl had given him a flier and sent him on his way. 

   He shoved the flier down into his coat pocket. The tower looked overhead as he approached and knocked on the door. From somewhere within the stone walls and glass windows, there was a loud crashing followed by an indistinct shout that he figured was probably telling him to stay put. After a long moment, the door opened. 

   On the other side stood a man who looked vaguely like he had been tied to a horse and dragged for ten hours. He had brilliant green eyes and gorgeous tan skin, a mess of dark brown hair atop his head and an air about him that said, despite the way he looked, he could kick someone into next week. He straightened himself and his clothes. “Can I help you?” he asked. 

   Jean wasn’t sure what he had been expecting from this mage. An old geezer, maybe? He nodded and said, “I’m here about the job opening.”

   The mage paused for a second. “Wait, seriously?”

   “Uh… yeah?”

   “Holy fuck,” the mage said, apparent disbelief on his face. “I put that ad out a  _ month _ ago and nobody ever applied after… well. No matter. You’re hired.”

   Now it was Jean’s turn to not understand the current situation. “Just like that?” he asked. “You aren’t even going to interview me or anything? Your flier said it was a live-in position. Aren’t you worried I might be a murderer?”

   “ _ Are _ you a murderer?”

   “Well, no.”

   “Then it’s no problem.” The mage shrugged. “Listen, I have had a horrendous time trying to keep the assistant position filled. The people who come here always think they’ll just be mixing potions and the moment something dangerous happens, they take off running. I operate at a higher level than most mages do. As long as you’re prepared to accept that risk, I’m prepared to accept the risk that you might try to kill me.”

   God, who  _ was _ this guy? How many assistants had he been through? For a single moment, he considered turning around and walking away to try to find a different— _ safer _ —job. The chill in the wind that bit at his nose wouldn’t allow him to do so. He nodded and said, “I can handle it.”

   The mage held out his hand to shake and Jean took it. “Welcome aboard, then. Happy to have you. My name is Eren Jäeger. What should I call you?”

   “Jean,” he replied. “Name’s Jean Kirstein.”

   The handshake ended and Eren motioned for Jean to enter the tower. Tower? House? He wasn’t sure what to call it, but it was impressive. Eren shut the door behind them as Jean took it all in; this was just the ground floor, but it was still a stunningly beautiful place. Plush carpets covered the floor while luxurious curtains hung down on either side of each window. A fireplace burned and bookshelves packed full lined the room. From the ceiling dangled a golden chandelier, casting intricate shadows over the whole room. 

   “Living room,” Eren said simply. “Next up is the kitchen and dining room. There are two individual bathrooms on the floor above that, then a small bedroom and a sitting room, above that is the workshop, and above  _ that _ is my room.”

   “There’s seriously six floors to this place?” Jean asked. “That’s ridiculous.”

   “You’ve never been in a mage tower before, have you?”

   “No.”

   Eren scoffed. “This place is small compared to some of the ones out there. Do you want a tour or are you gonna figure it all out on your own?”

   Judging by Eren’s short and sweet explanation about each floor of the tower, he didn’t think he could  _ possibly _ get lost in that place. Still, he wanted to know where everything was and what was off limits, so he agreed to the tour. Despite every ounce of logic he possessed screaming at him that it was completely unnatural for someone to be so willing to let a stranger into their home, he followed behind Eren as they marched up the stairs. Maybe Eren was a naturally trusting person, he thought, or maybe he was a good judge of character and decided that Jean was alright. Or, hell, maybe his past assistants all died horribly and so he really didn’t care  _ who _ he hired anymore.

   The tower was pretty cozy, all things considered. They got up to the floor with the bedroom and sitting room, the stairs opening into a thin hallway that ran to the continuation of the stairs on the other side. One of the walls that flanked the hallway didn’t have a door, just a door frame that framed a small portion of the sitting room Eren had mentioned. There was a door in the other wall, which Eren opened and motioned for Jean to enter. Jean did, Eren walking in behind him; the room was lit by the large windows and the small chandelier that hung from the ceiling. Eren seemed to like chandeliers, judging by how many of them there were in the place. 

   The room was small but not cramped. No bigger than his childhood room back home, it was somehow familiar to him despite how foreign the decorations were. The room looked like something from an Eastern continent, not the one they were on. But he liked it. The room was all red and gold and white, a color scheme he was unused to but thought he could grow fond of in due time. 

   “This room gets kinda cold at night,” Eren said as Jean examined the room. “If you get cold, you can light that fire pit there. And if that doesn’t cut it, just come up to my room. Don’t come in, just knock. I’ll wake up and you can just tell me you need some blankets and I’ll get some for you, alright?”

   Jean nodded and followed Eren back out, down to the next set of stairs. “Sure,” he agreed. “But why can’t I go in your room?”

   “Because it’s my room, jackass. You don’t come into my room and I won’t come into yours. It’s that easy.”

   “Alright, alright. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hiding some crazy shit up there. I don’t wanna die if I open a door.”

   “Nah, I’m just hiding the regular shit. Y’know, dirty drawings and stuff like that.”

   Jean laughed. “Fair enough. I don’t wanna go mess with your dirty drawings.”

   “Good,” Eren said as they walked out into the next room. 

   Jean stopped dead in his tracks. He had never been in a mage’s workshop before. There were even more books in this room, nestled safely in dark wood bookcases along the walls. The bookshelf line was occasionally punctuated by something else; a desk covered in papers, a table with bizarre equipment he had never seen before, a different type of shelving unit that held row upon row of full potion bottles, another shelf that held small jars of materials, and another desk all had their places along the walls. On the walls themselves, above the desks and table, were more papers, all covered in bizarre drawings and diagrams, scribblings that he couldn’t understand. In the center of the room was the type of thing he had always thought was a myth: An actual, honest-to-God  _ cauldron _ was positioned over a small fire pit. The fire wasn’t lit, the cauldron wasn’t full of bubbling water, but it was still like something out of a fairy tale.

   He wondered how much time he’d be spending in that room. If he was going to be Eren’s assistant, surely he’d be there quite a bit, right? Maybe the strange drawings and formulas on the walls would make sense to him at some point. Maybe he’d even find out what  _ nightscale _ and  _ fireweed  _ and the rest of those things on the material shelves were. He didn’t know half as much about this stuff as he should have; he hadn’t really thought about what it would be like to actually get to learn about magic, not after what happened back then. When all of his dreams had been ripped from him. 

   He mentally cursed himself. He left Trost to get away from those memories, so why was he still carrying them everywhere he went? It didn’t matter. He was here because he needed a job, not because he was still clinging to that childish hope. This job came with a free bed to sleep in, a roof to keep him sheltered from the winter snow, and he was pretty sure it came with food, too. That was what mattered. Magic or not, it was a job. That was it.

   As he stood there, soaking it all in, a sudden  _ clang _ caught his attention. The cauldron suddenly tilted on its own, wobbling due to one leg that was shorter than the others, like there was something in it. Cauldrons didn’t move on their own. Jean’s heart jumped into his throat. What the fuck was in there? 

   Eren sighed and rolled his eyes like this was nothing unusual, walking over to the cauldron and peering inside. “Hey,” he said. “Come on out. Don’t you wanna meet the guy I just hired?” There was a sound from within the cauldron, like something grumbling to itself. The cauldron continued to rock, its short leg hitting the floor as whatever was inside readjusted. “ _ Armin _ ,” Eren groaned. “I know it’s nap time, don’t look at me like that. You’ll have to meet him eventually, y’know. You can go back to sleep after you’ve introduced yourself.”

   Armin? A pet of Eren’s, maybe? Normally, he’d assume that it was a cat; cats were weird and liked sleeping in enclosed spaces. But  _ Armin _ was a shit name for a cat and, as far as Jean knew, they didn’t make grumbling noises. He was about to ask who or what Armin was when a defeated sigh echoed out from the metal cauldron. Furry paws appeared on the edge and, in an instant, a dog hopped out of the cauldron. It didn’t waste any time in trotting over to Jean, sniffing his legs, and then sitting down in front of him. It was… a really big dog, he thought. It had strong features and a coat of tan fur, so light it was almost blonde. Judging by the size and color, he was about to assume that it was some kind of overgrown retriever. 

   He put his hand down for the dog to smell. It did so, have his hand a quick lick, and let Jean pat its head. The fur didn’t feel like any dog he had ever felt before. Sure, a lot of dogs had coats that weren’t exactly  _ soft _ , but this felt almost… wild, he supposed. Like it was the coat of an animal that was never meant to come indoors. 

   Then he realized it wasn’t just a  _ dog _ . The animal standing at his feet, the one he was patting, was a fucking  _ wolf _ .

   There must have been a sudden terror on his face as he pulled his hand away, because the next thing Eren said was, “Don’t worry about him. He won’t hurt you.”

   Jean swallowed hard. “He’s… a wolf.”

   “Yeah, he's a wolf. And I’m telling you that you don’t have to be afraid.” He walked over and knelt down, scratching behind the wolf’s ear. “This is Armin. We’ve been together since we were kids.”

   “But wolves don’t live that long, do they?” Jean asked. He wasn’t an expert on wolves or anything, but Eren looked to be about Jean’s age and he  _ did _ know that wolves only lived for a few years. The math was all wrong. 

   Eren moves his hand from behind Armin’s ear to underneath his chin. Armin’s tail thumped happily on the floor. “Not in the wild, no, but he’s domesticated. It’s the same way indoor cats live longer than outdoor cats.” He looked up from Armin’s face to Jean’s. “And he’s not  _ just _ a wolf. He’s my familiar. This is just one of his forms. He can walk as a human, too, but he only does that around people he’s comfortable with. It might take awhile for him to warm up to you.” He stood up, seemingly oblivious to the protesting whine Armin let out. “Alright,” he said to Armin, “you can go back to sleep. Sorry for interrupting nap time.”

   Armin rubbed against Eren’s leg as he turned and went to hop back into the cauldron. Jean stood there for a moment, utterly dumbfounded, before he finally found his voice again. “So, he won’t eat me while I sleep or anything?”

   Eren scoffed. “Of course not. I wouldn’t keep a wild animal in my house.”

   “Are there any  _ other _ surprises I should be aware of?”

   “Nah, Armin’s about it. We don’t get into  _ that  _ much trouble in the house. The only other thing you should be aware of is that sometimes my summoning rituals don’t always end well. I might need you to help me clean up after something every now and then. Tried to summon a certain kind of snake once, ended up with a large, angry tortoise in my house. I know that doesn’t sound that bad, but that thing packed a punch.”

   Jean raised an eyebrow. What had he gotten himself into?


	2. Help Needed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean barely gets a moment to settle in. Thanks, Eren.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all I'm honestly so blessed that I've gotten such nice feedback already;; I'm not really involved in the fandom anymore so I don't fully know how popular different ships are these days outside of my little circle of other erejean friends, so I'm glad to hear that you guys have enjoyed it so far. <3 I hope you like this chapter, too!

   The morning sun streaming in through the window hit Jean square in the face, pulling him from the comfort of sleep. He groaned and opened his eyes, yawning as he did so. He looked around, momentarily confused by his surroundings; when was the last time he had slept in a real  _ bedroom _ instead of some shitty inn? The mattress beneath him was so  _ soft _ he thought he may never be able to get up again. Laying there for the rest of his life sounded pretty good. 

   There was the sound of scratching at the door. He looked over but didn’t make an effort to get up. The scratching ghave way to the sound of the doorknob rattling, and next thing he knew, the door was swinging open and the wolf was trotting into the room. Armin, he remembered. He hadn’t spent much time with him the day before, considering Eren insisted on getting him all moved in and used to the tower and explained to him just exactly what his job there would be. 

   Armin stopped at the edge of the bed and sat down, staring at Jean with wide blue eyes. Jean smiled and rolled over from his back to his side, hanging his hand over the side of the bed. “Hey, buddy,” he muttered, voice thick with sleep. 

   Armin pressed his nose against Jean’s hand, then maneuvered it to rest of on the top of his head. His tail gently swished behind him as Jean scratched behind his ear. 

   “Did you come to get me up?” Jean asked. “I’d tell you that you’re a good boy, but you aren’t totally a dog, right? I don’t wanna make things weird on day two.”

   Jean thought that, if wolves could smile, Armin would have been doing just that. He slipped out from under Jean’s hand, putting his front paws on the bed and nipping at Jean’s shirt and tugging. 

   Jean laughed. “You really did come to get me up, didn’t you? Alright, alright, I’m up.” He sat up and stretched his arms out above his head. “I’ll get dressed. Would you mind waiting for me out in the hall?”

   Armin made a motion reminiscent of a nod and left the room, plopping down outside Jean’s door. Jean was smiling as he got out of bed and walked over to his dresser— _ his _ dresser, holy shit. He hadn’t had a  _ dresser _ since he lived at home in Trost. 

   He shook the thought from his head. It didn’t matter. 

   His pack, now completely empty, sat slumped on top of the dresser. He laid his sleep shirt over the backpack before digging another shirt out of the top drawer. When was the last time that pack had been  _ empty? _ He’d been carrying everything he owned on his back for so long that it was a bit unnerving to see his pack empty, to know that all of his things had proper places now. At least, they did through winter. When Jean had told Eren about his situation—the whole  _ drifter _ thing, that is—Eren had made him a promise: Even if he sucked at the job and Eren couldn’t keep him on as his assistant, Jean was welcome to stay through the winter. He couldn’t live with throwing a man out into the cold on his conscience. 

   As he pulled on his pants, he wondered.  _ Would _ he be good enough for this job? He hadn’t been good enough with anything involving magic when he was a kid, and since  _ that day _ , he hadn’t touched magic at all. He took a deep breath. It was okay. He’d be fine. The duties Eren had outlined weren’t anything he was incapable of, even considering what happened back then. He sat on the edge of the bed to put on his socks, mentally rechecking the list of things Eren expected him to do as his assistant.

   Help mix potions. Share strength and energy during events such as summoning rituals or particularly intense enchantments or spells. Fetch materials from the shelves for Eren so he didn’t have to leave his project to get them himself. Accompany Eren to strange and dangerous places to refill stocks of strange and dangerous materials. Help Eren defend himself from any deadly creatures they encountered on their journeys or through summoning rituals. Test certain potions and spells Eren created.

   He was most worried about that last one. He hadn’t known he was signing up to be a guinea pig when he showed up on Eren’s doorstep with the intention of working with him. Eren assured him that he wouldn’t give him anything that was potentially fatal—that was what literal lab rats were for, after all, and the nearby farms had plenty of those that the cats didn’t catch—but there were, naturally, possible negative side effects. He trusted Eren to not kill him, for some reason, but he was really dreading the inevitable headaches, stomach aches, difficulty breathing, etc., etc., etc. that plagued every single list of side effects in existence. 

   Jean took a deep breath. It would all be alright. Even if he decided that it was too much for him, even if Eren decided that Jean couldn’t handle it and didn’t want to keep bothering with him, he had a place to stay all through winter. He didn’t have to worry about freezing to death out there, not this year. Next year, maybe, but he was safe for now. That was all he could ask for.

   Armin looked up at him when he opened the door. Jean smiled and said, “Lead the way, then. Take me wherever I need to go.” Armin got to his feet and started walking back towards the stairs heading down. Jean followed close behind, letting himself be led to the kitchen. Eren was standing at the counter, cutting slices of bread from a full loaf. He looked over his shoulder when Jean walked into the room.

   “Morning,” he said. “Took you long enough to get up.”

   Jean sighed. “What time is it?”

   “About nine, I guess.”

   “Christ,” Jean muttered, running a hand through his hair. “I usually get up before sunrise.”

   Eren shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I went down to the market and got our food for the day already, so you can just sit down over there. I’m almost done here.”

   Jean took a seat at the dining table. “What’re you making?”

   “Well, uh,” Eren said. “I’m not a good cook or anything, so… breakfast sandwiches?”

   “Seriously?”

   “Yeah.”

   Jean scoffed and stood up again, walking over to the counter. “Move,” he said. “I can cook. Let me take care of the rest of it.”

   Eren raised his hands in defeat and stepped aside. “Go for it. How’d you learn to cook? Thought you were a drifter.”

   Jean shrugged as he took over control of the kitchen. “It was just me and my mom when I lived at home. She taught me how to take care of myself and that included cooking. Just… let me handle the food situation, okay? If I’m already going to risk my stomach drinking your stupid potions and shit, I’m not gonna risk it on your cooking, too.”

   “I feel like I should be offended.”

   “You’re the one who said you aren’t a good cook.” Jean smiled to himself as he worked; this was a dumb, ridiculous conversation, but it really felt  _ nice.  _ It had been a long time since he last interacted with someone on a human level like that. “I just hope that you’re better at mixing potions than you are at making breakfast.”

   Eren huffed, though his annoyance was obviously fake—a response to Jean’s joke, nothing more. He knew Jean didn’t mean any harm in that comment. To keep the gag going, he started to say in a fake pretentious voice, “I’ll have you know—”

   The sound of knocking at the front door echoed through the tower. Eren sighed heavily. “Can you make that breakfast stretch far enough for one more?”

   “Of course I can,” Jean replied. “Who is that?”

   Eren stood and started towards the stairs. “My sister. She always comes over this time of week. I’d been hoping we could get breakfast done before she showed up, but…”

   Jean shrugged. “It’ll be alright. There’s enough for her, too.”

   Eren disappeared down the stairs. Armin, who had been laying under the dining table, made his way out and sat expectantly at the top of the stairs. After a few moments, he jumped up and barked a couple of times. A female voice replied, “There you are!”

   The first glimpse Jean got of her wasn’t enough to see her features; she charged up the stairs and immediately got down on her knees to play with Armin, her black hair hanging down around her and covering her face. Armin seemed overjoyed, tail wagging a thousand miles a second and excitedly yipping as the girl ruffled his fur all over, talking to him in a baby voice that Jean would have  _ never  _ attempted with a wolf-slash-shape shifting familiar. 

   It wasn’t until after Armin had rolled over onto his back and gotten a bunch of belly rubs that the girl laughed and stood. She looked over towards Jean, a curious eyebrow raised as she examined him. She… looked  _ nothing  _ like Eren. Their features were completely different. The only physical feature they seemed to have in common was the intense look in their eyes, though her eyes were dark and nothing like the bright, shining green of Eren’s. Not to mention the most obvious thing: While Eren’s skin was dark tan in a way relatively common in this part of the world, the girl was not so. She was Eastern, he thought. 

   Eren motioned for the girl to take a seat at the table. She did so. Eren, apparently sensing Jean’s confusion, shrugged as he sat down and said, “She’s adopted.”

   “I, uh, I figured,” Jean replied as he set about splitting the food onto three plates. “Nice to meet you.”

   The girl said, “My name is Mikasa. And you are… who? You weren’t here last week.”

   “Jean. Eren just hired me yesterday.”

   “As what? His chef?”

   “His assistant, actually.” He balanced two plates on one arm and carried the other in his hand, a skill he had learned after several months he had spent being waitstaff at dining establishments. He got the plates on the table without incident, then took his own seat. “I guess today is my first official day on the job.”

   Mikasa scoffed. “Really, Eren? You hired  _ another  _ assistant? Again?”

   “I needed a new one!” Eren defended. “He was the only one to reply to that ad I put out a month ago, so.”

   She sighed heavily, picking up the toast from her plate and taking a bite. In that moment, it struck Jean just how  _ beautiful  _ she was. “Just don’t kill this one, alright?”

   Uh, what?

   She saw the horror on Jean’s face and made a certain kind of noise, shaking her head. She hurried to swallow. “No, no, none of his assistants have ever  _ died _ ,” she said in a near panic. “It’s just, well, they tend to get hurt. The one before last lost an eye. The last one… the last one fell in love with Eren. He turned her down and she ran off and nobody knows  _ where _ she is. As far as we’re aware, nobody has seen her since then.”

   “Seriously? A girl ran away because he turned her down?” Jean asked; what kind of person was Eren if a girl would just  _ run away  _ after he turned her down? Wouldn’t a girl just cry a bit and then get over it if it was any other guy?

   “In all fairness, though,” Eren said, “I had made a potion that was  _ supposed  _ to be put into capsules to be ingested like a regular pill instead of drinking it like a potion. It was supposed to help people with trouble communicating be able to put their thoughts into words more clearly so they could really tell people what they thought. But… ugh. I fucked up and dropped the bottle. It broke, the stuff went everywhere, and she told me that she’d clean it up for me so I could go put my notes away so I could make it again later if I felt like it. Next thing I know, she’s tellin’ me that she’s in love with me. I tell her that I’m not interested. She flips out, saying something about how this always happens, and then she’s just… gone.” 

   Eren sighed and took a bite of his food. “She disappeared. I knew the potion could have adverse effects if someone came into too much direct contact with it instead of just taking the amount that went into the capsule. I guess that she inhaled the fumes or something and it fucked her up. I blame myself.”

   Mikasa reached over and patted Eren’s back. “It’s not your fault, Eren,” she said. “It couldn’t be helped. You had intended it to be a drug for medical use and, just like any drug, it had negative effects when taken the wrong way and in the wrong dosage. Besides, I’m sure she’ll turn up eventually. She was a tough girl. She’s still out there, doing just fine.”

   Jean remembered the way that person in the nearby town had said  _ after, well, you know _ . Eren’s last assistant hadn’t died. She had lost her mind after coming into improper contact with some of his work. Even if Mikasa said that the girl was tough and probably still alive, from the perspective of an outsider instead of someone trying to comfort someone they loved, Jean thought to himself that the girl had lost it. She stopped being herself and became someone else, someone prone to madness stemming from romantic rejection. It wasn’t that she loved him so much that she couldn’t take it. It was that she wasn’t herself, it was that the potion had changed her beyond redemption. She had become someone else. 

   Jean swallowed hard as Eren said, “I hope so. I really did like her, y’know, just not like  _ that.  _ I hope she’s okay.”

   Jean wondered if  _ he  _ would be okay. Sure, Eren had already said that some of the work would be dangerous, but he hadn’t really considered the mental effects of the job. He had been worried about losing a limb or an important organ or his life, not his  _ mind.  _ Then again, did it matter?

   It wasn’t like he was suicidal or anything, definitely not; he loved waking up in the morning to feel the sun on his skin, he loved being able to explore the world however he pleased, and he really did look forward to each  _ tomorrow.  _ Even when  _ those _ memories resurfaced, even when he closed his eyes and felt like he might still be back in Trost, he loved being alive. So it wasn’t that he was okay with dying or didn’t mind putting himself in mortal danger, it was just… he wasn’t sure how to describe it. If he got seriously hurt or died, that would  _ suck.  _ Still, it wasn’t like he had any particular ties to anything. He hadn’t spoken to his mother since he left home. Because he was a drifter, he didn’t have friends, just acquaintances. He didn’t have his own house to worry about. Until yesterday morning, he hadn’t had any steady jobs that promised work for any longer than a month. As much as he liked living, he sure didn’t have much in his life to be concerned about should he happen to die.

   He stared at his plate. His appetite disappeared as he realized just how little in his life had actually mattered up to that point. He sighed softly. It was probably his own fault, really. If he had been strong enough to stay at home instead of running, he’d still have his family and the few friends he had had back then, and, hell, he’d probably have a proper home and a steady job and all that. But it was too late for all of that, wasn’t it? He had made his choice. He had chosen to run. He had chosen the life of a drifter because he couldn’t stand and face his past. He was really weak, wasn’t he?

   Eren started laughing, the sound suddenly cutting through Jean’s thoughts. He looked back up and saw Mikasa chuckling, holding a hand over her mouth in a ladylike manner, the other on Eren’s shoulder. Jean had missed a joke, apparently. He smiled even though he didn’t know what was happening. Those two… looked like they really got along. Like they weren’t just family, like they managed to be friends, too. 

   In that moment, he thought to himself that maybe he could change those things that weighed him down as soon as he thought about them. He hardly knew anything about the man sitting across from him, but a part of him wondered if that guy could turn out to be more than an employer.

   Maybe, somehow, Eren could actually be his friend. Eren had already given him a chance by letting him stay there all winter, even if the job didn’t work out, and a chance was more than he had gotten in a long time. Ever since  _ then _ , he had been running. Ever since he left home, he had never had a place where he could stay and feel comfortable for any longer than a few nights. Until yesterday. Yesterday, he met a nice man who, in spite of his obviously irritable nature, was willing to open his home to a stranger. Jean was allowed to stay there, to live in a nice place like the tower for a few months. Eren had given Jean an opportunity to plant his feet somewhere; even if being a drifter was fun every now and then, he knew that he couldn’t keep living like that. Even if the job as a mage’s assistant didn’t work out, he could look for new work in town. He could stay warm during the winter while he saved up some money and… 

   Okay, well, he hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. What would he do? Where would he go? If he liked Shiganshina enough, he could stay there, sure. Or… or he could face the past and go back to Trost, assuming he was brave enough to do so. He could see his mother and his friends again if he tried hard enough.

   He didn’t get to keep thinking about it, though. Breakfast was over sooner rather than Later and Mikasa was on her way out, hugging Eren and giving Armin more belly rubs and telling Jean that he better not cause any trouble for her brother. He promised he’d be doing his best and, jokingly, said that she could absolutely kick his ass if he messed up too many times. He really had meant it innocently, but the next thing he knew, Eren was poking him in the ribs and saying that he was some kind of gross masochist who wanted to get beat up by a pretty girl.

   Jean denied it, naturally, but honestly? Eren wasn’t totally wrong.

   Once Mikasa was gone, Eren hauled him upstairs to the workshop while saying something about how it was time for them to get to work. He started gathering files from his desk, then walked over to his materials shelf and started rifling through the tiny jars. He glanced back and forth between the shelf and the papers, then groaning. He looked over at where Jean stood in the doorway, not sure what to do.

   “So,” Eren said. “I know you haven’t had much time to settle in. Today I’m going to need you to help me organize all this shit, alright? It’s been awhile since I last did it and it’s driving me insane. Whenever I organize them, they always end up all fucked within a few days. One of your top priorities from here on out is making sure that all of my supplies stay  _ in order _ so I don’t have to keep wasting time fixing them because I was too much of a dumbass to put them back in the right places.”

   Jean nodded, walking over to the materials shelf to stand next to Eren. “So, what do we do first? Take everything off the shelves?”

   “Pretty much. And as we put it all back up, we need to check the levels in all of the jars to see if there’s anything we need to get more of. Half the battle of being a mage is making sure you have all the shit you need.”

   “And I’m guessing those papers are to keep track of all that shit?”

   “Yeah, basically. I keep meaning to compile all of my material information into a journal or something, but…” Eren trailed off as he bent down to lay the papers on the floor, then beginning to take jars off the shelves and put them on the floor, too. After all, the floor was the largest workspace in the room. 

   Jean followed his lead, gathering jars in his arms and gently putting them down on the stone floor. “I could help with that too,” he said. “I have decent handwriting. If you make sure I understand your notes and tell me how you want the journal organized, I can get that done no problem.”

   Jean couldn’t see it, but Eren smiled. “That’d be great, actually. Fuck, though. Did we talk about how much your pay is? Fuckin’ forgot all about it.”

   If his arms weren’t full of fragile glass jars, Jean would have waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t need much. How high are you willing to go?”

   “How about five hundred a month?”

   “Five hundred copper?” Jean asked, eyebrows raised in surprise; the most copper coins he had ever gathered in a month was just a little more than two hundred. 

   Eren scoffed. “What kind of cheap bitch do you think I am? Silver, obviously. Well, actually, that’s dumb. Why don’t I just pay you in gold? I mean, it’s just another five hundred silver to equate to gold. Is that okay? You can totally just take all the silver instead of just getting one gold, though. Whatever you want to do.”

   Jean choked on his own spit and would have certainly dropped and broken the jars if he hadn’t just put them down. “A thousand  _ silver _ ? A  _ fucking gold coin _ ? Are you insane?”

   “Is that not enough?”

   “You have  _ got _ to be shitting me. That’s way too much!”

   Eren paused. It was his turn to be surprised. “You… are the first person to ever say that. They usually want more, considering the… y’know, the threat of death.”

   “I’m a  _ drifter _ , Eren. What the fuck would I do with all that money?”

   “You aren’t a drifter as long as you live here. You could, hell, I dunno. Go to the city. Buy some new clothes. Save the money for something in the future. Fuck if I know. Look, I’m the only mage within seventy-five kilometers in any direction, okay? I have money to spare.”

   Jean’s brain wasn’t functioning properly. A… a gold coin? Every month? He had never even  _ seen _ a real gold coin before. He could replace the entire contents of his pack and then some after one month of work, not that he wanted to; he had emotional attachments to everything he carried with him. He struggled to find words. Literally  _ any _ words. His brain and his tongue weren’t communicating.

   He swallowed hard. Then he said, “I can’t accept a…  _ gold _ coin. If you  _ really _ want to pay me five hundred silver in a month, that’s already more than I was going to ask for. I won’t let you go any higher.”

   “What were you going to ask for, then?”

   “At most? Two hundred and fifty copper coins.”

   “So  _ you’re  _ the cheap bitch in this relationship, huh?”

   “Shut up. I’m not used to having any more money than I need to keep myself fed.”

   Eren shook his head and refocused on the task at hand. “We’ll open up a bank account for you. Get you one of those nice bank slips, too. One of the nice  _ metal  _ ones so it doesn’t get ruined.”

   Jean forced himself to continue taking the jars from the shelves. “The hell is a  _ bank slip _ ?”

   “Holy fuck. You’re  _ really _ poor, aren’t you?”

   “All of my belongings fit on my back, Eren.”

   “It’s proof that you have a bank account. You know, so you can actually take out and put in money? Only works at the one bank, though. That’s fine. We’ll get you set up at mine. It’s really nice.”

   Eren was still trying to make Jean understand why he wanted to pay him so much and why it was a good idea for him to open an account at the bank when the last jar was on the floor. He realized that he was fighting a losing battle; Jean had lived too long without  _ luxuries _ to fully understand why Eren wanted him to have the money for them. The guy took baths in lakes, for God’s sake.  _ Lakes _ ! He didn’t have a bathtub! No hot water! Fucking  _ lakes! _

   Even as they sat down to start arranging the jars in alphabetical groups—Jean was  _ immensely  _ glad that Eren was at least organized enough to label his material jars—he still didn’t understand. The month he had made two hundred copper coins, he lived like a king. He got a double bed at an inn, got to order  _ meat _ , got to drink alcohol for the first time in fucking  _ forever.  _ Hell, he even got to buy a new knife. He didn’t even need a new knife! He just saw a nice one that he thought might be better than the one he had and was able to just… buy it! Two hundred copper was  _ more _ than enough for him. 

   And Eren was about to pay him  _ five hundred silver _ a month. Holy. Shit. 

   Once the money conversation fell to the side, having two sets of hands working on the material jar project made the whole thing go a lot faster. Barely two hours had passed by the time all of the jars were in alphabetical order on the shelf, a feat that usually took Eren half the day. Of course, he got distracted easily. Somehow… somehow it was easier to focus when Jean was there. 

   Ugh. That was lame. He mentally kicked himself and picked up those papers again, cross-referencing the names with the last time he filled the jars. If his  _ list _ was as organized as the shelves, it would have been a lot easier. Well, that was what Jean had offered to help make a journal for. 

_    Moondrop petals.  _ Eren found the  _ M _ section and browsed, finding the right jar and picking it up. Maybe he should have checked the levels while everything was still on the fucking floor, but  _ nooooo.  _ He just couldn’t have done that, could he?

   He let out a long,  _ loud _ groan. The jar was nearly empty. “ _ Fucking _ moondrop petals,” he muttered. 

   Jean leaned forward to look at the contents of the jar. “I already told you I don’t know what half of this shit is, so… what are moondrop petals? Besides being, well, petals.”

   “They’re the bane of my existence, that’s what they are. They have certain magical properties that I haven’t found in anything else. They bind other materials together better than anything else on these shelves. Just say your magic shit, toss  _ one  _ into the cauldron, and it promises that the whole batch will be viable. I use them all the time. I stocked up last time I gathered them, naturally. But…”

   “But you ran out?”

   “It’s the beginning of winter. I have more people coming to see me this time of year than any other. People want potions to boost their immune systems, potions to make their coughs and stuffy noses go away, potions to make them heal faster, enchantments on their clothes, summonings of these little ugly-ass fairies that  _ supposedly  _ bless people if you give them something nice—which is total bullshit, by the way, but people insist on doing it anyway. I guess I’ve been too busy to notice I used so many.”

   “Okay, sure, but why are they the bane of your existence? It’s a plant. A very useful one, evidently.”

   “It is so much more than a plant, Jean. It only grows under very specific circumstances. They flower at night, in the hills north of here. Doesn’t sound bad, I know, but do you know what  _ else _ happens at night in those hills?”

   Jean shook his head. “I’m new here. I have no idea.”

   Eren laughed grimly. “You’re gonna love it! The whole damn place is  _ haunted _ ! And not by your regular household ghosts who just stand and stare at you while you sleep, no, these are hardcore motherfuckers. They’ll kill you if they touch you. People go there to commit suicide. One touch by one of those bastards and  _ poof _ . You’re dead. Nice knowing you.” He glared at the jar as if furious that it had the  _ nerve _ to be almost empty. “I hate these fucking things. I hate how useful they are and how hard it is to get them and—oh, motherfucker. The blooming season is almost over. It’s winter.  _ Fuck.  _ As soon as the first snow falls, they’ll be dead until spring.”

   So. That was all a thing. Jean stayed silent, knowing damn well what was about to happen. 

   Eren looked over at him, a manic desperation in his eyes. “This isn’t a one-person job. I  _ need _ your help. Are you ready to go on our first adventure?”

   You know what? Jean was gonna take that gold coin after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's okay friendos I promise Jean won't die


	3. No Help Required

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean goes with Eren to gather the supplies they need.  
> It doesn't quite go as planned.

   Jean crossed his arms like it would shield him from the cold. Eren had put a small enchantment on Jean’s coat to protect him from the wind, considering he hadn’t gotten a new coat in  _ ages _ and it certainly wasn’t in the best shape of its life. It still didn’t help much. He could see his breath and fought the urge to channel his under five-year-old. You know, the one who wanted him to pretend to be a dragon again. 

   God, childhood had been so great. He got to be a dragon on cold days. And now? Now he had to be an  _ adult.  _ Gross. 

   The first hill rose above them. The whole area was surrounded by tall wooden fencing, the fence panels covered in strands of basil, holly, clover, and a fuck load of other plants that Jean didn’t know the identities of. Eren said that the herbs and such were used to deter the spirits from crossing the fence and bothering people away from the hills. That, and that the fence was there to deter people from going  _ into  _ the hills. Like they were doing. It wasn’t like it was  _ illegal _ to go into the fenced-off area, no, it was just that the chance of death skyrocketed as soon as you did. 

   So, naturally, they jumped the fence. What could go wrong?

   “Stay close to me,” Eren said as soon as they were over the fence. “This is basically enemy territory. Stay alert.”

   Jean barely managed to keep himself from groaning loudly. He couldn’t believe this. There he was, in the middle of the night in below freezing temperatures, risking his life to help a guy he didn’t even really know. Still, he followed close behind Eren and kept his head on a swivel. He kept catching glimpses of things, vague shapes in the mist. A chill ran down his spine and his whole body shook in the cold. 

   Eren stopped dead in his tracks. Jean didn’t notice, having been staring into the fog in an attempt to see if that thing was a ghost or a figment of his imagination, and walked right into Eren’s back. The impact caught him off guard and he tripped, falling hard on his butt and  _ really _ wondering how his life came to this point. Eren turned around to help Jean up, the whole time holding a single finger to his lips in the classic  _ shhh _ gesture. 

   Jean took the hand Eren offered and got back to his feet. Eren pointed ahead of them; a field of beautiful silver and purple flowers stretched out in all directions, the flowers reaching upward towards the moon hanging in the sky. And among the flowers drifted several hazy figures, all shaped like humans but distinctly something else. Those weren’t human spirits, Jean realized with a start. Those were…

   “What are they?” he whispered as quietly as he could. 

   “Nobody knows,” Eren replied. “We stay at the edge of the field, got it? Grab as many full flowers as you can and just shove them in that bag I gave you. We can take the petals off when we get home. We shouldn’t stay here any longer or go in any deeper than we need to.”

   Jean nodded. “Alright. Sounds good.”

   Eren took a tentative step forward towards the field. They had stopped a few paces away from the edge of where the flowers grew, just so Eren could talk to Jean with a decent amount of belief in the idea that they wouldn’t die while doing that talking. With every step they took, Jean’s stomach twisted itself a new way. Those things out there hadn’t noticed them yet, but God knew if it would stay that way. 

   They reached the edge of the flowers. They both crouched down, grabbing and pulling handfuls of flowers out of the dirt. There was no time for gentleness or care. 

   Jean ripped up some flowers and was suddenly hit by an overwhelming scent. It made him gag as he worked; was that  _ really _ the smell of the flowers? It was terrible, like rotting eggs on top of a garbage pile in the high heat of July. He swallowed hard and kept working. He was  _ not _ going to vomit. He refused. 

   Time passed as they worked. Both of them frequently looked up to see if any of the ghostly figures had noticed them, but they remained ignorant of the humans crouching there in the shadows. Aside from the scent and the constantly nagging fear that they would get caught off guard by a ghost and die, the task wasn’t that bad. A gust of cold wind carried more of that awful scent to Jean, causing him to gag again. He held it down. He was  _ not going to vomit.  _ The cold bit at his nose and ears and exposed fingertips; he wished he had taken Eren’s advice and worn full gloves instead of thinking that gloves without fingertips would allow him to work more efficiently. 

   He sighed softly and leaned forward to grab another bunch of the flowers. His fingers brushed against something cold and hard. A rock? No, no, it seemed too smooth to be a rock. He leaned forward just a little bit more to see if he could see what it was. 

   His heart almost stopped. 

   It was a body. 

   His eyes grew wide as he realized that that awful scent hadn’t been the flowers at all, no, it was someone’s dead and rotting corpse. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t keep it down this time. He turned away from the body just in time; he may have felt the urge to empty his stomach of all it contained, but he was a decent enough person to not throw up all over a corpse. 

   “What the hell, Jean?” Eren whisper-yelled at him. “Shut up?”

   Jean couldn’t even stop heaving long enough to say the words “dead body.”

   “Oh, fuck me,” Eren said, no longer attempting to keep his voice down. Jean coughed, strands of saliva dripping from his mouth onto the ground, and looked up. The figures had noticed them and were beginning to approach. Jean spit and looked over at Eren. All Eren needed to say was, “Run.”

   Running was the worst fucking idea Jean had ever heard. Still, he managed to stand up and run with Eren, all the while hoping and praying that he wouldn’t have to fall down and finish what he started back there. He looked over his shoulder against better judgement. The figures were gaining on them, approaching faster by the second. 

   His heart pounded in his chest. Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck!  _ This was all his fault. If he had just been able to keep it all down, if he wasn’t the type to puke upon seeing a dead body… he ran harder. 

   The fence came into sight. Another glance behind revealed that the figures were close, too close. Just a couple of meters behind them. The last sprint towards the fence felt like it took forever, the long moment only ending after the boys had both gotten themselves up and over the fence. 

   And not a moment too soon. The spirits stopped just a few centimeters short of the fence, unwilling to touch the protective barrier. If Eren and Jean had been just a bit slower about getting over… 

   “What the  _ hell, Jean _ ?” Eren demanded once they were safe and had caught their breath. “What happened back there?”

   Jean swallowed and could’ve sworn that he tasted acid. “There… there was a body. A dead body. Didn’t you  _ smell _ it?”

   “No,” Eren replied. “I’m used to the smell of dead people. Doesn’t even register anymore.”

   “What the fuck?”

   “Long story. Anyway. Are you okay now? You’re really pale.”

   Jean sighed. “I’ll be fine. I just—God, Eren, I  _ touched it _ ! I didn’t realize that it was the smell of a  _ corpse.  _ I thought maybe these damn flowers just had a terrible smell and then I reached out to grab some and I  _ touched the dead person, Eren! _ ”

   “Calm down. You’re going to work yourself into a panic attack.”

   “Are you fucking kidding? I’m already panicking! I was working next to a corpse that whole time and then… I don’t want to touch dead people, Eren! If there is the  _ slightest  _ possibility that it’ll become a regular occurrence, I’m done.”

   “It’s okay, I  _ promise.  _ It’s my fault, alright? I should have noticed the smell but I wasn’t paying attention. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again, okay?”

   Jean was too far gone by then to care. He had just encountered a  _ real corpse _ and been chased by mysterious spirits that would have killed him with one measly touch. His breathing was too ragged, his heartbeat too erratic, his thoughts too distressed. 

   Eren barely managed to catch him as he passed out. 

 

—

 

   There was a warm cloth on Jean’s forehead when he woke up. His head was propped up on his pillows, his body all tucked in underneath the covers. He glanced over to the nightstand. There was a glass of water there, along with a little note. 

_    Drink this. You’ll feel better. It’s infused with chamomile. _

   Jean took the glass and drank. That was chamomile, alright. But it wasn’t like chamomile tea. It was more like… it was kind of like fruit-flavored water, like when someone put orange slices into a pitcher of water to make orange-flavored water, but with chamomile instead of fruit. He drained the small glass; he had discovered that he rather liked that little drink. 

   For a moment, he wasn’t sure how he got there. Then it occurred to him: After he  _ passed out _ , Eren must have… carried him. It was the only explanation. Damn. Eren was stronger than he looked, apparently.

   The door creaked open. He looked over and saw an unfamiliar man, a bit chubby and blonde, walking like he was unsure of the space he took. His eyes grew wide when he saw Jean sitting up. “Oh,” he said. “You’re awake. I’ll get Eren.”

   “Wait,” Jean said, stopping the man from leaving. “Who are you?”

   The man smiled sheepishly. “That’s right. You’re used to my other form, aren’t you? Even though it’s only been a couple of days, you’ve become surprisingly calm about seeing me.”

   Wait. “ _ Armin _ ?”

   “That’s me.”

   “Holy shit.” Armin was actually kinda cute, really, with that blonde hair and those blue eyes and those cheeks. Now that he thought about it, the wolf version of Armin had a few extra pounds on him too, didn’t he? He refused to voice any of those thoughts and instead asked, “Wh—Why are you in human form, exactly?”

   “Eren has been up in the workshop separating the petals from the plants. He asked me to keep an eye on you. I knew I would be most useful in this form, in case you woke up and needed any help.”

   On one hand, it was kinda sweet that Eren had asked Armin to keep watch to make sure Jean was okay. On the other hand,  _ come on.  _ Jean just passed out because he touched a dead person. He was fine. Even though he felt like he might still be able to feel the cold flesh if he closed his eyes and concentrated, he was fine. 

   “You don’t have to go get him. And I don’t need anything. I’m alright. Just… need to get up and go to the bathroom, actually. No help required, by the way.”

   Armin chuckled. “I’ll still go and tell him that you’re awake. Be careful on the stairs.”

   “Well, if I’m not careful enough, you guys will hear it.”

   Armin smiled and nodded before he fully left the room. Jean hesitated. It was true that he needed to go to the bathroom, but… Eren had asked Armin to keep an eye on him. Maybe he was reading too much into it and maybe Eren was just really a nice guy, but Jean was having a bit of a hard time wrapping his head around it. Nobody cared about drifters that much. Nobody gave a shit what happened to them so long as they didn’t die in their yard. He had to remind himself that as long as he was allowed to live in that tower, he wasn’t  _ really  _ a drifter, not anymore. But it still felt weird to say that he had a home, so he didn’t. 

   He supposed that Eren was one of the weird ones, one of those people who  _ actually _ gave half a shit about people. And maybe it meant that Eren would like to be friends with Jean as much as Jean would like to be friends with him. Maybe it didn’t mean anything other than that Eren didn’t to be held accountable for Jean dying, considering that he would  _ never  _ get another assistant if this one died. 

   He shook the thoughts from his head and got up. It didn’t matter. He just needed to go to the bathroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised Jean wouldn't die and he didn't die


	4. Help Appreciated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean gets home to find that Eren made quite a mess of things.

   Jean unlocked the front door and walked inside. He had been out all day getting some shopping done for Eren; it was cold as fuck out there, but Eren had said that they were running low on some stuff that he usually just got from the market, so while Eren was messing around in his workshop as per usual, Jean had been out there doing the shopping. Ginger root, cinnamon sticks, basil leaves, salt rocks, blah, blah, blah. It was all stuff that Eren swore was important, but Jean had already started working on that materials journal and he knew damn good and well that Eren didn’t use cinnamon sticks for any magic stuff.

   That asshole just got Jean to do a part of his grocery shopping.

   He shook his head and walked into the tower. He stopped dead in his tracks. The living room was a  _ mess _ . Books were off the shelves, paintings were tilted, pillows were split open and the stuffing was everywhere. What the fuck happened while he was gone? From somewhere upstairs, he heard glass shattering. “Eren?” he called, closing the front door behind him. “What’s going on?”

   Eren yelled. It wasn’t words, no, it was more of a… battle cry? “ _ Fucking imps! _ ” Eren screamed after more glass shattered.

   About that time, Armin came running down the stairs, chasing a small figure. Jean had never seen anything like it before; it was short and fat, its skin dark red and tiny, miraculously useful leathery wings sprouting from its back. A long, pointed tail swung around behind it. The figure landed on one of the shelves, and Armin put his front paws up on the bookshelf to try to reach it. He was growling the whole time, and if Jean didn’t know better, he’d think that the little red figure was taunting him.

   “What the fuck?” Jean muttered. He put the shopping bag down on the floor. There was another crash from upstairs. Leaving Armin to deal with that thing on the shelf, he started up the stairs to see if he could find out what was going on up there.

   Another tiny figure came racing down the stairs, bumping into him and knocking him off balance. He tripped and barely caught himself against the wall. The figure, almost identical to the one Armin was trying to get to, seemed to laugh at him. What was going on?

   “Eren!” he called again. “What is this?”

   “I already said!” Eren yelled back. “Imps!  _ Fucking  _ imps! Get up here!”

   Jean swallowed hard and pushed forward. It seemed that there were more and more of them the further up the stairs that Jean went. In the hallway between the two bathrooms, he was attacked from above. An imp dived upon him from where it was hanging out by the ceiling, scratching him with its claws and shrieking happily as it did so. He swatted at it, trying to get it to leave him alone, but it continued. Finally, he caught it with a swing of his arm and it hit the wall with a  _ thud _ . He raced down the rest of the hallway to the other set of stairs, taking them two steps at a time. 

   He resisted the urge to look into his room as he ran past; the door was open when it hadn’t been before he left that morning, and God, he didn’t want to think about what those fucking things might have done in there. Sure, Eren owned the place, but he had grown pretty fond of that little room over the past couple of weeks. And Eren? He’d grown even more fond of him. It wasn’t that he was in love or anything, of course not. They hardly knew each other. But this was the first time in a long time that Jean had been able to settle down somewhere and form a semi-meaningful relationship. Even if he ended up leaving at the end of winter, he could say that he actually had a home and a friend and all that good shit that people normally talked about. So, for the moment, it didn’t quite matter what hell might have been unleashed in his room. Eren was calling for his help, and after everything Eren had done for Jean, Jean was going to help.

   He made it into the workshop. A few vials and bottles were shattered on the ground, not that they were the real issue. No, the  _ real _ issue was the large amount of little red figures jumping around the room. The cauldron had been moved off to the side, and in its place was a gently glowing circle drawn on the ground. “The circle!” Eren yelled at Jean while… whacking one of the imps on the head with the staff he took with him on long journeys. “Interrupt the line!”

   Jean may have been physically useless in a fight, but he was smart enough to understand what Eren meant. Diving practically headfirst through the crowd of imps, he reached the circle just as one more imp seemed to materialize out of thin air in the middle of it. It jumped excitedly and then up onto Jean’s head, pulling his hair and laughing maniacally. Jean did his best to ignore it, starting to scrub at the line on the floor with his sleeve. The line began to wear away slowly but surely, and then the circle broke. The lines stopped glowing. The skull of the imp Eren was beating shattered beneath the staff and caved in. Jean reached up and grabbed hold of the one on top of his head and pulled, flinching as the imp continued to hold desperately onto his hair. He successfully yanked the thing off and looked over at Eren, desperate for some indication of what he should do next.

   “Just fucking kill it!” Eren said as he began to fight with another. “We need to clear this whole place out, Jean. Kill every last one of the fuckers.”

   “Are you kidding?” Jean asked as the imp tried to wrestle its way out of his grasp. “I can’t fight for shit! How am I supposed to—”

   “Just slam that one’s head against the ground!” He swung, connected with the body of an imp, and the thing flew into the wall and hit hard. Eren aimed another hit and crushed that one’s skull, too. “I’ll get you something to fight with, alright? Just help me deal with this.”

   Jean hesitated, looking at the wringing thing in his hands. He glanced between it and Eren and back, then swallowed hard and did as he was told. The imp’s head broke as he slammed it against the stone floor. “Why do we have to kill them?” he asked, his hands suddenly covered in mysterious blood. “How did this happen?”

   “I just needed a couple,” Eren said, reaching under a desk and tossing a thick, sturdy dowel over to Jean. “Their skin. It’s valuable. I was gonna make it quick—” he swung at another imp, knocking it unconscious but not killing it yet, “—and painless, but I guess the summoning circle opened up in the wrong place. Too many came through. They kept coming until you fucked up the circle. God, there’s probably a hundred of the damn things in here by now. We can’t just relocate them, Jean. We have to kill them.”

   Jean looked around the room. It seemed like one would break from its mischief every now and then, just to bother one of the humans. It made it easy to deal with them one by one, but Jean got the feeling that, sooner or later, they’d start ganging up on them. He gripped the dowel and took a deep breath while trying to gather his thoughts. It would be okay, he told himself. It would be fine. All he had to do was whack some things really hard with a stick, right? He could do that. He could. It’d be fine.

   Another imp stopped messing with the shelves and ran towards Jean. There was no more time to think, apparently. In a moment of courage, he swung.

 

—

 

   It was late afternoon when the last of the imps had been flushed out and killed. Jean was desperate for a shower. He was covered in sticky imp blood, he was sweating, his hair was in need of a wash after having so many grubby little demons using its ever-increasing length against him, and, fuck, he was  _ covered _ in tiny little scratches. He looked over at Eren, who was leaning against the wall and slowly sliding down towards the floor. “What the fuck do you even need imp skin for, anyway?” Jean asked.

   Eren finally hit the ground, stretching his legs out in front of him with a groan. “If you take the skin,” he said, “and process it into leather, you can use the leather to make all kinds of useful shit. It’s especially good for making gloves, actually. The gloves are resistant to a lot of things that usually, well, destroy your gloves. Imp leather is  _ great _ . I just… I fucked up the summoning. I haven’t done imp summoning since before what happened to my last assistant. I needed help but thought I didn’t. I’m, uh, I guess I’m sorry. For making such a mess. I sent you out shopping and you had to come back to  _ this _ shit.”

   Jean walked over and sat down next to Eren. “How are we even gonna clean this place up?”

   “One room at a time, I guess. I’m just glad they’re too stupid to open locks. They could’ve gotten outside or gotten into the desks or—God, it would’ve been bad. But I won’t need to summon any more of the damn things for… probably well over a year, maybe a couple years. So that’s good. Thanks for helping me out.”

   “I mean, I live here, too, so. It’s not like I could just  _ not _ help.”

   “Still. I appreciate it. I’ll appreciate it if you help me clean up the house, too.”

   “Yeah, I will. I’d feel like a douche if I only did my room and left everything else to you.”

   Eren yawned. “Lord. I’m gonna rest for a while, though. Get to all that cleaning later.” He looked over at Armin as he came into the room, making his way over to the guys and laid down on Eren’s legs. “Hey buddy,” he said, scratching behind his ear. “Thanks for your help, too.”

   Armin made an affirmative-sounding noise but didn’t raise his head an inch after he had rested it on Eren’s legs. Jean closed his eyes, too, and though it wasn’t a particularly comfortable position, he felt himself relaxing. Had he ever done  _ any  _ fighting like that before? He had been in a couple of fistfights over the years, considering that he was a drifter and a lot of people hated drifters, but nothing major. Nothing like this. Nothing where he had to fight to kill. 

   He sighed softly. It had already been a long, long day. It didn’t seem like it was gonna get much better, either.

 

—

 

   Jean opened his eyes and yawned. He had fallen asleep. That was what happened after spending the better part of a day fighting imps, he supposed. He realized he was still sitting on the floor, leaned over with his head resting on Eren’s shoulder. He thought that he should probably sit up, but… Eren was resting his head on top of Jean’s and he couldn’t stand to move and disrupt him. Eren needed even more rest than he did; God knew how long he had been trying to get the problem under control before Jean finally got home. Armin was also still with them, and, having a huge weak spot for cute dogs, Jean reached out and laid a hand on Armin’s side, feeling the fur between his fingers. Armin didn’t respond to the touch. He had been helping Eren out too, after all. 

   Jean didn’t bother to try to keep track of how much time passed. He kept track of everything else, though, to keep himself occupied until Eren woke up. There was an ache in his lower back from sitting so still on the stone floor for so long. There were at least one hundred imp corpses stacked where the summoning circle had been. The pile of corpses was starting to stink. They’d have to deal with that shit, like,  _ immediately.  _ Getting rid of the bodies was more important than straightening paintings and shit. There were also several bottles and jars shattered on the floor, including a few of their materials jars. They’d have to get new jars and label those to replace the broken ones. Some of the jars had contained things that would need to be swept up and thrown out, but a few had, thankfully, contained things like leaves, petals, and bunches of herbs that could just be picked up and dusted off. Where would they even keep the imp skin? Jean remembered that Eren said he had another workshop on the grounds somewhere that was specifically for that kind of stuff, but he had never shown it to Jean before since they hadn’t needed to use it. 

   God. Jean was going to have to help carry all of the dead fucking imps to that second workshop. Gross. 

   Eren started to move. He sighed. “Fuckin’ what time is it?”

   “No idea. I was asleep, too.” Jean was barely managing to hold it together; Eren wasn’t lifting his head off of Jean’s, no, he seemed perfectly comfortable like that. It wasn’t that it was  _ uncomfortable _ , really, it was just that… Jean thought he might be enjoying the contact a little bit too much. It had been ages since he had last been close with another person.

   “We’re never gonna get the house clean before bedtime.”

   “Nope.”

   “God, do you just wanna sleep in my room with me? I’ve got a really nice couch in there, so I’ll sleep on the couch and you can have my bed.”

   “I thought I wasn’t allowed to go into your room.”

   “I’m giving you temporary permission since your room is trashed. Don’t get used to it.”

   Jean smiled and rolled his eyes. “Alright. But, are you okay with that? I mean, I don’t wanna force you out of your own bed or anything.”

   “Don’t worry about it. It’s common courtesy for the host to allow the guest the most comfortable spot in a room.”

   “Since when do you care about  _ courtesy _ ? You seem to be physically incapable of waiting until you’ve swallowed your food to start talking.”

   “Oh, fuck you. You know damn well I just kinda… push it to the side while I talk. Like a chipmunk.”

   “Still gross.”

   “Fucker, do you want a bed to sleep in or not?”

   “I would appreciate it, yes.”

   “Then shut up and help me gather the motivation to go out to get some fuckin’ dinner or somethin’. The kitchen is trashed, too.”

_    Ugh _ .


	5. Help Each Other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean remembers the past and decides to drown it in alcohol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this a bit later in the day than I meant to oops but it's done and here so :D

   The deep, freezing cold of winter was full of nothing but misery. Jean had always dreaded winter, even as a child. He remembered the way it used to be—the way the other kids would form teams and enjoy snowball fights, the way he was never allowed anywhere near them because he was  _ different _ . He had always ended up alone, making a tiny little snowman that usually ended up getting destroyed by a bully. He would go home in tears, his mother would wipe them away, and when he was out of his cold snowy weather clothes and in his nice warm pajamas, she would make him a cup of cocoa. 

   Those cocoa sessions with his mother had chased away heartache and solved problems. There was no hurt that a winter cocoa session couldn’t chase away, not until  _ that _ day. 

   Jean had been making breakfast for he and Eren when the calendar on the wall of the kitchen had reminded him what day it was. It had been twelve whole years ago, and yet… he still remembered it like it was yesterday. 

   That day, it just wasn’t enough for his bullies to destroy his tiny little snowman. That was the day when the bullies decided that he, the fat kid with the wild magic abilities that he used to build said tiny little snowman, was the right thing to stomp all over. Because people in Trost didn’t practice magic. Because people in Trost were scientifically minded. Because the people in Trost believed that humans could do anything without magic. Because the people in Trost raised their children to not play with magic or those who did. 

   The magic was beaten out of him that day. He hadn’t even known that it was possible until it had happened, until he was bloody and bruised in the snow and struggling to sit up after the group around him finally dispersed. Until he had tried to grab onto a thread of magic to give him the strength to stand and found that there were no threads left to grab; all of that wild magic energy, all of it, was gone after he had been attacked by kids with sticks and thick-soled shoes. He limped home to his mom, crying openly this time instead of trying to hold himself together until he got home. There was no cocoa session that day, not until she had picked him up and carried him to the nearest doctor. The doctor had told them that he wasn’t going to be the same as he was before, that something had changed deep inside of him.

   Instead of his magic abilities being able to blossom and grow the way they would have when he hit puberty, they had been ripped away because of a sudden trauma.

   Jean still hated the snow.

   He put a full plate and a glass of orange juice on the table in front of Eren before going back to the counter to grab his own. “Eggs are fuckin’ expensive around here,” he said as he sat down, partially because it was true but mostly because he needed to distract himself. 

   Eren laughed. “Eggs are expensive everywhere. Where were you getting cheap eggs?”

   “Little old ladies who needed help on the farm, mostly.”

   “Holy fuck, you’ve been a  _ farmhand _ ?”

   “I’ve done what I’ve had to do. So, y’know, if you ever need a cow milked, I can do that.”

   “I’ll keep that in mind. What other stupid jobs have you had?”

   “Are you sure you’re ready for that discussion?”

   “Dude, you’ve been living with me for, like, two and a half months. I  _ think _ I can handle it.”

   Jean shrugged and shook his head. “I worked with a fisherman for awhile. That one  _ sucked.  _ Then there was the time I worked at that tavern, which also sucked, by the way. Helped run a pumpkin patch one autumn.”

   “A fucking pumpkin patch?”

   “People don’t like carrying their own pumpkins from the patch to their carriage, believe it or not.”

   “The fuck?”

   “My back hurt for two weeks after the patch closed for the year.”

   Eren leaned forward. “So, tell me honestly. Is this the best job you’ve ever had or what?”

   Jean raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you digging for compliments right now?”

   “What if I am?” Eren replied with that usual shit-eating grin of his. “I mean, you get to live in this nice comfy tower in a town where the people don’t want to drive you out because you’re a drifter, don’t you? That’s pretty good.” When a look like  _ fair enough _ passed over Jean’s face, Eren continued. “I gave you free reign over the kitchen, too. You seem pretty into that. And, hey, it’s good for me, too, because I’ve been known to set fire to a lot of shit. Oh, and, you know, there’s the part where you and I get to take bets on if Mikasa will ever come visit from the city and say that she killed Annie. Nobody’s ever taken me up on those bets before since it’s  _ too morbid  _ or something. It’s… pretty nice to have someone to get drunk with, too.”

   Jean raised his hands in defeat. “Alright, alright. You win. It’s a pretty great job.” He looked down at his plate, empty by now, and held in a depressed sigh. “About getting drunk. Can we, uh, do that tonight?”

   “Hell yeah,” Eren said rather enthusiastically. “Somethin’ goin’ on? I usually ask you that.”

   “It’s… a long story. Today isn’t a good day for me. Something bad happened once and now I have to think about it every single year when I remember what day it is.”

   Eren’s teasing, lighthearted mood fell away. “Fuck, really? I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He leaned back again, sitting in his chair like a normal person. “Look. You know I’m not good at deep, emotional stuff, but… if you want to talk about it…”

   Jean shook his head and took a drink of his juice to avoid answering for just a few more seconds. He didn’t speak until the glass was back on the table. “I’d rather not talk about it, really. Not now.”

   “Right. Yeah. Okay.” Eren looked away. The atmosphere in the room grew stiff and awkward with silence. After a few moments of that awful  _ feeling _ , Eren took a deep breath and stood up. “Alright, well. I know you do the cleaning in this room, so. I’m gonna go upstairs and start on today’s work.” He gave Jean a soft look, the kind he would never admit to giving  _ anyone.  _ “Take your time today, alright? Don’t worry about anything. Just come up when you’re ready. And, if you don’t feel like it, don’t. Take care of yourself until it gets late enough for us to start drinking.”

   Despite it all, Jean managed a smile. “Of course.”

 

—

 

   Eren laughed loudly, raising his glass towards the sky and waving it at the moon. “What is with that thing?” he said through his laughter. “It’s like—it’s like the moon is a stalker or somethin’! It’s so weird!”

   Jean’s own laugher, however, was a bit more like a giggle. “Wh—What even made you think of that? It’s just the moon, dude! It’s more like, fuck, uh, like a clingy puppy or somethin’! It hangs out all the time because it loves you!”

   “No way! A puppy is suuuuuuper chill! The moon is, like, the creepiest thing ever! It never goes away! Even the sun knows how to fuck off when it gets to be nighttime!”

   “The sun doesn’t fuck off! It just, like, goes to the other side of the world! It doesn’t love us enough to hang out all the time! The moon loves people!”

   Eren took another swig of his drink. “Man, fuck that! Nobody loves  _ anybody _ that much!”

   Jean choked on his laughter, falling backward into the grass and staring up at the stars. They were at their usual drinking spot, a little hill on Eren’s property. They always went there to drown sorrows and stresses. Always went there to hang out and be drunken fools without breaking anything. 

   Warmth coursed through Jean’s veins. Most of the world was a haze. He grinned. He loved this. Even though it was cold as all hell, he felt as warm as he could. And it wasn’t all because of the alcohol, though that  _ definitely  _ helped. Laying out there, staring up at the sky and messing around with Eren, was the best feeling in the world. 

   Eren drained the remainder of his glass and collapsed onto the ground next to Jean with an  _ oof _ . He sighed happily. Their bottle was almost empty; this was the second one. The alcohol was sinking in quick. Nothing really made sense any more, other than that they’d have to go back to the tower to get another one. Ugh. Gross. He didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. His head was too fuzzy to care about it. He looked over at Jean. “Hey,” he said. “Y’know what? I really do like havin’ you here.”

   Jean met his gaze. “I like being here. Thanks for hiring me.” Eren started to laugh again, and Jean couldn’t help but follow. “Wha—what’s so funny about that?”

   “Don’t people uthually—” Jean laughed harder at Eren as the alcohol continued to kick in and his tongue started to fail him. “Shut up! People hate their bosses, y’know!”

   “How could I ever hate you?” Jean asked, reaching over and giving Eren a joking little shove. “You’re a dick, but you—you’re really a nice guy.”

   Eren rolled his eyes. “Tha’s fuckin’  _ gaaay _ ,” he said. “You’re  _ shuper _ gay.” He gave up on trying to sound like a sober person and let the words flow however they were going to flow. 

   “ _ You _ shut up! Don’t fuckin’ act like you don’t fuck dudes too!”

   “‘S different!”

   “Fuckin’  _ how _ ?”

   “I wanna fuck girls, too! Tha’s how!”

   Jean let out another burst of laughter. “I—I think I’d make an esseption for Mika, though.”

   Eren gave Jean a return shove. “Don’t say shit like tha’ about my sisther! That’s gross!”

   “She’s so pretty!”

   “I know! I’m aware! But don’t fuckin’—”

   “Ah, come on! You thin’ I’m gonna make a move? She’d kick me inta nexth week.” Jean propped himself up and reached over Eren to grab the bottle. The remaining liquid sloshed around at the bottom. He laid back down and downed the rest of it. “Fuckin’... shit, man, where’s tha rest? ‘M not done drinkin’ yet.”

   Eren groaned. “Don’ wanna go get more,” he whined. “Not worth it.”

   “I uthed to have magic,” Jean said, not meaning to but not really being able to keep himself from doing it. 

   “Huh? Ya did?”

   “Long time ‘go. Did—” he paused to hiccup before continuing, “—you know ya can beat magic outta someone?”

   “Huh? No way,” Eren replied. “‘S not how it works!”

   “It is, though! They di’n’t like magic in Trost. Som’ kids beat me up. It f—fucking hurt like hell. Could’a died. I mith it, bein’ magic.”

   Eren rolled over into his side to face Jean, draping an arm over him. “Rwally? Never heard o’ that. I di’n’t know. Are you…?”

   Jean sighed and rolled towards Eren. It wasn't just the drunkenness keeping him warm in that moment. He… really liked laying with Eren like that. “‘M fine. Happen’d long time ‘go.”

   “But doe’n’t it suck? Can’t imagine bein’ wi’out my magic.”

   “Does suck. Don’ like thinkin’ ‘bout it. But I’m uthed to it by now.”

   Eren pouted. “Doeth workin’ wit’ me stress ya out? Make ya think ‘bout it?”

   Jean shook his head. “Mm. I’m happy here wit’ you.”

   “‘M happy wit’chu here, too.”

 

—

 

   They had to lean on each other all the way back to the tower, stumbling and laughing and cursing the whole way. Climbing the stairs was almost disastrous, the only thing keeping them from tripping over their feet being a duet effort of each lifting one foot at a time, putting it up on the next step and then bringing their other feet up. It was a slow journey, and by the time they got to the floor Jean’s room was on, they were both giggling like schoolgirls about how stupid this was. 

   “Don’ thin’ I can get ta my room on m’ own,” Eren said, not letting go of Jean. “Come w’ me. We can help each ot’er up. Plenty ‘f room, promise.”

   Jean nodded. “‘Kay. Le’ss do it.”

   Getting up to the workshop was easy enough, but the only access to Eren’s room from there was an attic-style, stair-like ladder. Jean reached up and pulled the string to bring the ladder down, letting Eren stumble his way over to the first steps and laughing his ass off as Eren slowly climbed up on all fours like an animal. 

   Eren was almost at the top when Jean’s amusement got the better of him and he lost his already shaky balance, falling backwards and barely managing to catch himself on a desk. On the desk was a lone potion bottle resting near the edge, full of a mysterious purple liquid. The bottle reacted to Jean slamming into the desk and fell to the floor, shattering on impact. Jean groaned. He didn’t wanna deal with that. 

   He used his shoe to push the broken glass underneath the desk. Knowing that Eren had had the right idea, he got down on his hands and knees to start crawling towards the ladder. Some of the purple liquid stuck to his skin as he crawled, not that he could be bothered to care. He couldn’t really care about anything but getting up into Eren’s room with him like he said he would. 

   Eren was already laying in his bed, waving one hand in the air like he couldn’t understand how it worked. Jean chuckled and managed to get over to the bed, getting up onto it and flopping down next to Eren. “Stupid,” he muttered. He looked at his hands, which had already dried; had the liquid come off while he crawled or did it soak into his skin? Ugh, he didn’t care. 

   “You’r’ sthupid.”

   Jean grinned before finally passing out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tbh I've never really written drunk folks before so?? Idk what I'm doing I'm just wingin it


	6. A Great Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean realizes he might have made a huge mistake by breaking that bottle.

   Jean groaned and looked into the bathroom mirror. His head was pounding. He didn’t remember much about what happened that previous night, not beside the fact that he had admitted to Eren that he used to have magic before it was beaten out of him. And Eren had been supportive, considering how drunk they had both been at the time. 

   He rubbed his left temple. He’d have to go sweep up the broken glass from the bottle he had broken last night. He did, at least, remember that happening. What had been in it? He hoped it wasn’t some kind of fucking poison or something, but considering that it had just been left sitting there, it was probably fine. He’d ask Eren about it in a little while. They needed to eat breakfast first, though. 

   He looked up when he thought he caught a glimpse of movement in the mirror. The only thing looking back at him was himself. He shook his head when there was nothing else there, telling himself that he just had a killer hangover and he was being ridiculous. 

   Then he raised his hand to brush some hair out of his face. 

   His reflection didn’t move an inch. 

   Instead, it smiled at him. “Hey,” it said. “When you go to make breakfast, are you gonna tell Eren about all the times you’ve dreamed about him?”

   Jean stumbled backward in shock, hitting the wall and somehow managing to knock the breath out of his own lungs. What the fuck? What the  _ fuck?  _ Was he still drunk? “Wh—”

   His reflection rolled its eyes. “You’re such a dumbass. I’m as real as you are. And you? You had a  _ lot _ of dreams about Eren last night. I wonder how he’d feel about it.”

   Jean shook his head and ran out of the room. He was seeing things. His mind was still fuzzy from all the drinking last night, that was all. He leaned against the wall to catch his breath. He was okay. He was fine. He had just drank too much. 

   The thing was, though, he had been drunk plenty of times since he came of age and nothing like that had ever happened before. What was different? They had had the same brand that they always did. Did they get a bad batch? Maybe they changed the recipe a bit? He pressed a hand to his chest and felt his heart hammering. This was ridiculous. This was fucking ridiculous. He stood there until his heart rate and breathing had both returned to normal, then took a calming deep breath and started towards the kitchen. He was fine. He would pretend that this didn’t happen and he would make breakfast for him and Eren and forget that he was ever even concerned about it.

   He was  _ fine.  _

   But he wasn’t. He saw his reflection staring back at him from every reflective surface, sometimes watching him as he passed by and sometimes speaking to him. When it spoke, Jean heard his own voice. His own voice saying the secrets that he had meant to take with him to the grave, his own voice betraying him by bringing those secrets to light instead of letting them rest in the dark recesses of his mind. His intention of asking Eren what the potion was fell away as he struggled to keep himself together and avoid anything reflective. 

   And Eren? Eren didn’t even notice that the potion was gone. He sighed and cursed about the broken glass, thinking that it had just been an empty bottle and telling Jean to be careful when he swept it up, but didn’t seem to realize that it had once been full. He didn’t seem to care. Well, that wasn’t a huge surprise, actually. Eren had fallen into the habit of letting Jean take care of pretty much everything that had to do with organization and planning; while Eren had an incredible talent with magic, Jean had gotten quite good at keeping all of his things in order over the years of his being a drifter. Very few of his belongings had actually survived the incident with the imps, but the same could be said for pillows, blankets, dishes… pretty much everything around the house. They had handed over a pretty penny or two in order to replace all of the things that they had lost.

   It wasn’t until dinnertime that Jean managed to collect himself enough to ask Eren, “Hey, you remember a purple potion you had on a desk in the workshop?”

   Eren paused for a moment to think. “Um… Yeah, actually, now that I think about it. Did you put it away for me? I haven’t seen it today.”

   Jean swallowed hard and avoided looking at the silverware. He couldn’t just… say that he broke the bottle and wasted the potion, right? He nodded instead, saying, “Yeah. It wasn’t labeled, though, so I wasn’t exactly sure where to put it. What’s it do? I can make a label for it in a little while.” God, he was lying through his teeth. He didn’t usually lie. He didn’t  _ like _ lying. He may have been a useless drifter, but he prided himself on being the most honest person he could be. Right now, though? He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to tell Eren the truth and say that he had broken a potion bottle when he was drunk, didn’t want to admit to possibly wasting something really useful because he was too hammered to keep himself standing up straight.

   Eren shrugged. “The label would be a great help. And, well… you remember that story I told you? About the girl I worked with before you came here?”

   “The one who inhaled some fumes and ran away forever after you rejected her? Yeah.”

   “Shut up,” Eren replied. “But yeah. That. Well, I’m a stupid fucking stubborn idiot and I thought it would be a good idea to try to make a new version of the potion. Something with less possibility of fumes and overdose. I have  _ no _ idea if it’s gonna work, but the potion needs to left to sit for awhile before use. It’ll probably behave strangely if it doesn’t have enough time to rest.”

   Oh,  _ shit _ . Jean tried to look as unbothered as possible, but… he had broken that bottle. He had directly touched that liquid. It had probably soaked into his skin. God, was he going to end up like that girl? Was he going to lose his fucking mind or something because there wasn’t enough time for the potion to do its thing? Fuck, fuck  _ fuck _ . Sudden fear stabbed at him but he couldn’t afford to let it show, so he nodded and tried to look like he thought that was really interesting as he started to clear away their plates. “That’s neat,” he said. “Hopefully it’ll work out.”

   “I’m fuckin’ prayin’, dude. I really want that thing to  _ work _ . I’ve probably tried ten versions of the stupid thing.”

   Jean’s reflection stared back at him as he washed the silverware. It raised an eyebrow. “He has no idea how many secrets you keep, does he? Why don’t you tell him?”

   Jean cleared his throat. “So, in theory, what kind of stupid shit would happen if someone used the potion before it was ready? You said it could behave strangely if it’s used before it’s ready, but knowing you, that could mean literally anything. You gotta be more specific than that. I’m your assistant, right? I gotta know how this shit works.”

   Eren gave one of those shit-eating grins of his. “That’s true. Anyway, I’m not  _ exactly _ sure. I can’t just knowingly give someone an unfinished potion because I want to know what it’ll do if used improperly. Fuck, you know me. I don’t even test on rats if I can avoid it. Imps, though… Oh, shit, that’s a good idea. We should get a couple imps and I can test it out on them and—”

   “No!” Jean exclaimed. “No. No more  _ fucking _ imps, Eren. I’m done. If you try to summon more imps, you’re doing it by yourself.”

   Eren laughed loudly, wildly; the way he did he was  _ genuinely  _ amused. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding! I’m not going to summon any more imps until I absolutely need to, I  _ promise _ . I learned my lesson. I’ll find some other shit to test on. My theory is that it could give people hallucinations or something along that line. Not sure.”

   Well, that explained a thing or two. “That’s weird,” Jean said, deciding that was his safest option. “I guess it’ll take a couple days to settle, yeah? Who’re you gonna test the finished product on?”

   “Uh… myself, I guess?”

   “Seriously? The fuck did you hire me for, then?”

   “Well, I didn’t fire you to lose your mind. If… if it’s still dangerous and can ruin a person the way the last one did, it should be me that suffers the consequences. It’s my creation and I need to take responsibility for it.”

   “I came here to help you with that sort of thing, though, didn’t I?”

   “I won’t let it happen again, Jean. Even if you’re willing to try everything for me, there are things I just don’t let you do. Things that I need to do for myself.”

   Jean’s reflection chuckled. “He has no fucking idea. Tell him, I dare you. Tell him what you did. Or are you still the coward you were when you ran away from your problems in Trost?”

   “You’re really hard on yourself sometimes, you know that?” He drained the water from the sink and stepped away. He sighed. “I think I’m going to go do some reading,” he said. That was just about the only thing he could think of to do that wouldn’t result in him having to pretend to not hear his reflection taunting him that way; the pages of books couldn’t reflect his own image back at him. “Come find me if you need anything. I mean that, by the way. Anything.”

   Eren rolled his eyes but smiled anyway. “Whatever. Get outta here.”

 

—

 

   Jean stretched his arms out over his head and looked in the mirror. It had been a week and a half since he broke that bottle, and surprisingly enough, he had gotten pretty used to his reflection talking to him. It wasn’t like it was saying anything that he didn’t already know or hate himself for; hearing the words spoken in his voice was unnerving to say the least, but it was all true. All of it. He was being a coward, he didn’t need it to tell him that. He knew that it was ridiculous that he often dreamed about Eren. He knew that he needed to tell Eren the truth—not the part with the dreams, God no, but the part where he had broken that potion bottle and he was really, really sorry. The right time never came, though, and Jean didn’t like to blurt things out just because there was a brief moment of silence he could squeeze some words into. He found himself doing it once in awhile, sure, but who didn’t? He just didn’t want to make a habit out of it.

   His reflection looked incredibly bored as Jean dried off after his morning shower. “Hey,” it said. “Are you  _ ever _ going to do something interesting? You never do anything unless Eren is involved. You  _ really _ like him, don’t you? Always wanna be with him? Don’t wanna be apart? Winter’s almost over. What are you gonna do if he decides he doesn’t need you here anymore?”

   Jean glared at himself. Or, well, his reflection. He still wasn’t quite sure how to talk about the thing, even if he was only talking about it in his mind. He couldn’t say that he was positive that Eren wouldn’t kick him out after winter was over, but he hadn’t been fired yet, so he didn’t have a reason to think that he’d have to leave. It’d be fine. His reflection was just taunting him again, the way it always did; it, apparently, got off on being a huge jerk. So he tried to ignore it and went about his business.

   There was a knock at the door. “Jean?” a soft voice asked.

   Jean looked over but didn’t make any move to open the door; he didn’t want to risk subjecting Armin to seeing him still naked. “Yeah?” he asked in response. “What’s up?”

   “Eren’s busy putting some things together, so he asked me to come tell you that we have to make a big trip. Tomorrow.”

   “Ooh, doesn’t that sound fun?” Jean’s reflection teased.

   The real Jean asked, “What are we doing? Should I be worried?”

   “Do you know anything about the fae?” Armin asked.

   “The fae? You mean those pint-sized winged bitches who always get drunk on nectar and high on pollen?”

   “They’re also brilliant people who have never engaged in war,” Armin said, “but yes. Them.”

   “Other than the stuff we just discussed, no, I don’t know anything about them.”

   “Well, there’s a village of them about a day’s walk from here. Each village has a couple that’s sort of like a king and queen, but they’re a largely democratic species. This village’s ruling pair has just had a new child and they sent for Eren to come examine the baby. Apparently, she isn’t reacting to her environment the way she’s supposed to and the parents want to make sure that it isn’t anything magical in nature.”

   “What, they think their baby is cursed?”

   “Not everyone likes the fae. They’re a more frequent target for curses than you’d think.”

   Even though Armin couldn’t see it, Jean found himself nodding. He could understand that. People hated the fae, that much he knew; though he wasn’t quite sure  _ why _ they hated them. “Alright. Tomorrow, you said?”

   “Right. We’ll be getting up early to go, so it’s in your best interest to gather whatever you’ll bring with you today. He wants to talk to you about the trip, so go visit him when you’re done in there, okay?”

   “Okay. I’ll be done in just a minute.”

   Jean’s reflection grinned. “A day-long hike with Eren to a secluded fae village, huh? That’s  _ fun _ . Can’t wait to see how that turns out.”

   Jean’s patience finally broke and he raised his middle finger to the mirror.


	7. Help. . . better.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren, Jean, and Armin head out to the fae village. Jean gets to meet the mostly reclusive species for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, admittedly, it's almost midnight as I'm posting this so it's almost Sunday so I almost broke schedule but IN MY DEFENSE I WENT TO SEE BLACK PANTHER TODAY SO IT WAS KINDA HARD TO FOCUS ON ANYTHING ELSE

   Jean’s legs had started to burn. God, before he moved in with Eren, he could have walked across the continent and back with little trouble, but now… it looked like living a regular life, living in one place with a steady job, guaranteed food, and plenty of downtime had gotten to him. It hadn’t been that long, not really, but he was definitely starting to fall a bit out of shape. He was pretty sure he had put on a few pounds, too; he hated to notice it, hated to be reminded of when he was a soft little boy, but his face was looking a bit rounder than it had when he first moved in with Eren. 

   Eren didn’t seem to be having any trouble, really. He was about a meter ahead of Jean, his head on a constant swivel as he looked around for landmarks and things that might be useful. He had told Jean earlier that he had walked this path plenty of times, but it was important to make sure that none of the landmarks had changed. Every now and then, Armin would dart into the trees and come back with something in his mouth. First it was a bunch of flowers, then a surprisingly large pine cone, then a bunch of acorns, more flowers, some leaves… and one by one, Eren would either take a book from his bag and put the plants somewhere between the pages for pressing or would grab a glass bottle or some kind of box to put the other items in. Jean had no idea what the fuck that was all about, but it was actually pretty cute. 

   They were heading uphill now, the ground surprisingly free of snow for this time of year, but Eren insisted that they needed to get to the village and back as soon as possible; according to him—or some magic-y bullshit, Jean wasn’t sure which—it would snow again within a few days. Getting stuck in the middle of a snowstorm, far away from civilization, would suck for several obvious reasons. Jean stretched his arms out above his head. Would this really be okay? He really didn’t know much about the fae, and even though Eren had tried to explain that they were gentle souls with hearts of gold, Jean wondered how much of that was true. He didn’t know anything for  _ sure _ , but he had heard rumors that the fae were basically curious, annoying little bastards who, though very clever, had about the attention span of a two-year-old on a sugar high. The last time Jean came into close contact with a two-year-old, the kid ended up sobbing for no apparent reason and Jean ended up with a black eye from the mother. Yeah, this was going to be  _ great _ .

   At least he didn’t really have to take care of anything on his own. Eren was the one that the fae would be worried about. He was the one who actually had the magic in his veins, the one who could actually examine the baby for curses or whatever. Jean briefly wondered why the fae couldn’t do that shit for themselves—he was pretty sure they had roots in magic—but let the question fall away, figuring that maybe because of their tiny size they just didn’t have the same capabilities that a full-grown human had. It didn’t really matter  _ why _ they called Eren out. If Jean minded his own business, didn’t fuck anything up, and did was he was told, the fae would, according to Eren, give him some kind of blessing. He didn’t particularly  _ want _ a blessing, but if this trip resulted in some kind of something good, he wouldn’t be complaining. 

   There was one thing in particular that he was enjoying about this trip. Even though his legs were starting to hurt, even though he had no fucking idea where they were or how to deal with the fae when they got there, and even though he  _ really _ missed his bed already, he was momentarily free from his reflection. Unless he pulled something metal out of one of their bags, he wouldn’t have to see himself and deal with  _ that _ . He decided that he would tell Eren about the broken bottle when they returned home; if there was the slightest possibility that Eren would get mad and yell at him, Jean would prefer to be at home for it. For now, he enjoyed blissful silence. His own voice didn’t mock him for being unable to control what happened in his brain while he slept, wasn’t able to make him feel weird about following Eren all the way out here. Only  _ he _ could do that to himself right then. God, it was nice.

   Eren stopped walking and looked over his shoulder at Jean. “Hey,” he said, waiting for him to catch up before starting to walk again—this time at a slightly slower speed. “Wanna stop for a break in a little bit? There’s this really nice spot I think you’ll like. It’s, well, it’s a tree, but it’s a really big, really old tree. And there’s this ivy that grows on it year-round, okay, and the ivy has these little flowers that are always in bloom, and it’s really neat because they have this symbiotic relationship where the ivy shields the tree from a parasite native to this area—relax, okay, the parasite only bothers trees—and in exchange, the tree shares some of its nutrients with the ivy and gives it a place to grow as much as it damn well pleases. It’s  _ beautiful _ .”

   Jean nodded. “Yeah, that sounds interesting. I’d like to see it. How much further is it?”

   Eren thought for a moment. “Uh… another half-hour from here, I think.”

   Of course it was.

 

—

 

   It was evening when Eren pointed out the light within the trees, pulling Jean from the path they had been walking until then and headed towards it. As they got close, Armin’s tail wagged almost as much as it did when Mikasa came to visit; what were the fae like if he was this excited to see them? Jean readjusted his pack and tried to focus on not tripping over the uneven ground in the dimming light. More tiny lights began to flicker to life around the first. 

   Eren grinned. “It’s the village, y’know. We’re almost there. I… know I told you that we’d have somewhere to sleep, but honestly, that was bullshit. They’re the fae. They don’t have human-sized buildings. There’s a tent and everything in my pack. We’ll be sleeping outside. Don’t worry, though, there’s this cozy little place where I always set up when I come out here. It’ll be fine.”

   “You’re a dick,” Jean said. “Could’ve just told me we’d be sleeping on the ground.”

   “Would you have actually come with me if I included that detail?”

   “...Good point.”

   “Thought so.”

   “So what exactly are the fae like? Besides what you told me earlier, I mean. Like, is there anything I do naturally that would offend them or something? I know they aren’t big or particularly powerful, but I’ve seen some weird shit in my day. You wouldn’t think that a flock of chickens could do much damage to a grown ass man but  _ let me tell you _ . Chickens don’t fuck around, Eren. Please tell me the fae are not like angry chickens.”

   Eren laughed. “They’re  _ suuuuuper _ chill, I promise. They understand that humans are different from them. Even if you do something that they might consider offensive for another fae to do, they won’t give  _ you _ shit about it because you’re human. It’s like, you know how sometimes if you have a pet it’ll shit in the middle of the living room floor, but you can’t get  _ that _ upset about it because you know it’s an animal and not on the same level as you? It’s like that with the fae. They might be irritated and there might be a stinking fucking mess to clean up, but at the end of the day, they know that we function differently so they won’t jump down your throat or anything.”

   Jean let himself give a tiny sigh of relief. “Thank fuck.”

   “Although, you gotta tell me the story about the angry flock of chickens. I am literally begging you, Jean. What happened with the fucking chickens? What did you do to them?”

   “It wasn’t me! Honest! I know, I know, I’ve told you about a lot of weird-ass shit and pretended like it wasn’t about me but it really was. I’m dead serious this time, though. I wasn’t the chickens’ target. It was during one of the times when I was serving as a farmhand, alright, and it was a pretty big farm, so the owner brought in another helper. Well, he was… ugh. He was pretty useless, honestly. He was this, like, stupid bald kid who didn’t realize that, even though you  _ can _ go into the coop to collect eggs while the chickens are there, you  _ really shouldn’t.  _ I tried to tell him that he’d get fucked up if he did that. You kinda have to… lure the chickens out of the coop. At least, those chickens. Those chickens were such douchebags. So he goes in there with the fucking chickens while I’m standing outside the pen waiting to see how horribly this end, and he’s in there for roughly ten fucking seconds before he starts screaming and runs out of the coop. He’s freaking out and I’m about to ask why he’s screaming, but then there’s just this seemingly never-ending stream of chickens chasing him out of the coop. He tells at me to open the gate of the pen so he can get out, but I know damn well that if I open that gate, we’re gonna have some loose chickens on our hands, so I have to keep it closed until the chickens calm down. In the meantime, though…” He shivered dramatically. “I’m surprised he made it out with both eyes still in his head.”

   “You have  _ got _ to be making this up.”

   “I fucking  _ wish _ I was making this up.”

   “Who  _ raised _ that guy?”

   “Honestly? I’m really torn between wanting to know and  _ not _ wanting to know.”

   Eren shook his head like he couldn’t believe any of what he just heard. “Fuckin’—”

   He was cut off by the sudden appearance of a little something, catching Jean off guard and making him let out a rather unmanly sound of surprise. Eren, however, was unaffected. At least, he was unaffected by the appearance of the little fae man. He was not, however, unaffected by that sound Jean made. He immediately started laughing at that, apologizing to the fae for his outburst of laughter but not apologizing to Jean for laughing at him. God, if it was anyone else, Jean would have been annoyed as fuck. But Eren? He was alright if Eren kinda laughed at him for that. It was, after all, a pretty silly sound.

   The fae’s wings looked like gossamer, thin and semi-transparent with light glittering as it bounced off the surface of them. As expected, the fae in front of them looked like a miniature human, all four limbs properly proportioned but unnaturally delicate looking. Like a porcelain doll, he thought. But the face was too foreign to be familiar, too familiar to manage to be very surprising. The nose was tiny, even tinier than he would have expected; it was more like a tiny bump than a nose. The lips were too thin, too straight, only a little bit pinker than the skin. The eyes… the eyes were what did it. They were big, far too big for such a tiny face. And they were almost perfectly round, like more of the eyeballs were visible than should have been, with the irises and the pupils taking up a chilling amount of space. Jean’s breath nearly caught in his throat when the fae smiled and revealed two rows of perfectly straight, needle-like teeth. 

   Eren reigned in his laughter and apologized again. “Seriously, I’m so sorry about that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him make that noise before.”

   The fae nodded. “Don’t worry, I understand,” he—at least, Jean was pretty sure that it was a  _ he _ —replied. “How was the trip out? I hope you didn’t have any trouble.”

   “It was about the same as always. No big deal,” Eren said. “So, this is my assistant. His name is Jean, but he doesn’t talk very much,” he said with a sharp look over at him, “so don’t worry about him, alright? He’s just here to help me out if I need it.”

   “And you brought your familiar, I see,” the fae said, flitting over and landing gently on the ground in front of Armin. Armin immediately flopped down onto his stomach and the fae gave him a little pat on the nose. “Lovely to see you, as always. The children have missed you. Little Lillian has grown up to be so beautiful since your last visit.”

   Jean stood to the side and just… pretended to know what exactly was going on as Eren and the fae continued to chatter before  _ eventually _ deciding to head towards the village. It was dark by the time they got there, only making Jean’s anxiety worse. He wasn’t afraid of the fae, but he was afraid of, like… stepping on one or knocking over a house or something. He slowly shuffled behind Eren, letting him lead the way and closely following his path. 

   The fae led them to what was surely a vast castle to their kind, but was little more than the size of, say, a couple of coffee tables stacked on top of each other. Eren kneeled down in front of the building, looking into the glass doors that led out to a balcony. The fae landed on the balcony and knocked on one of the doors. Quickly, another male fae appeared and opened the door, stepping out to look up at Eren. 

   He spoke in a foreign language, the only word Jean recognized being  _ Eren.  _ Eren replied in the same language, albeit a bit more slowly than the fae. Eren motioned to Jean and the new fae nodded. “Welcome, Jean,” he said. “I am what you would recognize as the King of these people. If you are trusted by our mage, you are trusted by us.”

   “It’s nice to meet you,” Jean replied. “I’m honored to be here.”

   The King smiled and Jean had to force himself not to physically cringe; why did these people have such needle-like teeth? “We may need the extra help.” He looked over his shoulder into the room, calling out something in his own language. A fae woman, the first Jean had seen, approached slowly. She cradled a baby in her arms, the baby being  _ maybe _ about the size of Jean’s forefinger to the second knuckle. The baby fit the proportional laws of these people, of course, but it was disconcerting to see such a tiny little baby, especially when it looked so human. 

   The fae woman bowed her head briefly to Eren. “Nice… see you, again,” she managed to say. She didn’t know much of human language, then. Fair enough. 

   Eren smiled kindly at her. “And it’s nice to see you, too. How’s the little one?”

   “Name Kina,” the woman, presumably the Queen, said. She stepped further out onto the balcony to let Eren get a better look. Miniature torches mounted on the castle walls served as relatively subpar but still acceptable lighting. “Will not…” She made a confused, thoughtful noise as she looked for the words. “Will not drink from flower.”

   Eren’s smile faded. “That’s not good,” he said, lowering his hand to be even with the balcony. Jean had no fucking idea what the Queen meant, but he listened intently anyway. “May I see her?”

   The King said something to the Queen. She nodded and, almost reluctantly, held the baby out towards Eren, placing her on his fingers. Carefully,  _ so  _ carefully, Eren raised his hand up to his face to see the baby. He closed his eyes and muttered a tiny little incantation. Thin green tendrils rose from his skin and wrapped gently around the baby, running across her skin as if looking for flaws. The baby stirred from her sleep and started to giggle, kicking her legs and waving her arms in amusement. The tendrils must have tickled. 

   Eren cooed at her, saying that she was so pretty and doing so well with her checkup. “You’re a sweet little baby, aren’t you?” he said to her. Jean raised an eyebrow. Eren speaking in the typical style of  _ baby talk  _ was incredibly jarring. “Such a good girl! Yeah! You’re such a good lil baby! We’re almost done, you’re doing great. Aaaaaand… there we go! We’re all done!” The tendrils retreated and disappeared back into Eren’s skin. He lowered his hand back to the balcony, letting the Queen take her child back into her arms. 

   “Is… okay?” she asked.

   Eren nodded. “Well, she isn’t cursed, at least. I didn't find any traces of magic. But if she won’t drink from the flowers, I’d like to give her a full, proper examination tomorrow.”

   The Queen tilted her head. The King said something to her again; a translation, Jean figured. She held her baby tight and bowed. “Please,” she said. “Help Kina… better, Eren.”

   “Of course. I’ll take good care of her. We’ll find out what’s wrong and make sure she gets all better, I promise.”

   The Queen pressed a kiss to her baby’s forehead before smiling at Eren. Jean would never get used to those smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll get more fae interaction next chapter and aaaaaaaalso maybe some other fun shit [[eyes emoji x10]]


	8. Help Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren and Jean finish their business with the fae, but the trip home doesn't go as smoothly as they had hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lord;;; this one is actually kinda long so idk I hope y'all are into that

   The obnoxious shrieking of a bird ripped Jean out of his sleep. He jerked awake and sat up so fast his head spun, making him squeeze his eyes shut tight. When he was able to open them again, he realized that the tent was empty. Cold air hit him like a punch to the face when he unzipped the tent and looked outside; there still wasn’t any snow, but he was more now a bit more inclined to believe Eren’s claim that snow was on the way. He crawled out of the tent, not even bothering to change out of his pajamas and into his regular clothes. Eren was stoking a fire about a yard away from the tent, also keeping watch over a boiling pot of  _ something _ over the flames. He looked over when Jean sat himself down in front of the fire. 

   “Morning,” Eren said. 

   “Mornin’,” Jean replied. “Mm. Where’s Armin?”

   “He went to the village already. The kids around here love him. Human kids get to play with dogs all the time, but these fae kids don’t get that unless I bring Armin with me when I come out here. Their pets are, like, nonpoisonous spiders. Sometimes a snail, I think. Oh, and the rich ones capture tadpoles and raise them until they get too big to take care of.”

   “Spiders and tadpoles? That sounds fine. But… snails?”

   “I mean, it’s not like they can have cats.”

   “I know, I know. Still. Snails are boring. They’re basically the turtles of the bug world.”

   “Well. You aren’t wrong.” Eren shrugged. “They’re different than we are, though. They really like snails around here. They practically give ‘em out as  _ gifts _ . Do you  _ know _ how many snails I’ve taken back home with me because they want everyone to experience the joy of a pet snail?”

   “Is  _ that _ why there are so many snail shells around the tower?”

   “Damn right.”

   Jean laughed. “What the fuck? Why don’t you just say no when they try to give you a new one?”

   “Because! I don’t want to be  _ rude.  _ They’re really good people. I gotta be… gracious, I guess.” He shrugged again. “Anyway. Go put your clothes on, alright? I’m, uh, making an attempt to make breakfast for once. It’ll be done in a minute and after we’re done eating we have to go back to the village.”

_    Great.  _ “Alright, alright,” Jean grumbled, crawling back towards the tent to get dressed. He really,  _ really  _ didn’t want to do this. Seriously, the fae seemed to be much nicer and far less intoxicated than he had originally anticipated, but there was something about them that made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t just their small size or those creepy teeth, either; he didn’t know what it was, exactly, but the more he thought about it, the less comfortable he felt here.

   He took a deep breath. It was gonna be a long day.

 

—

 

   Eren took the little baby Kina in his hand, muttering the same incantation as yesterday. Once again, those green tendrils emerged and made quick work of examining the baby’s physical state; Jean supposed that the tendrils were the only way Eren could give her a proper examination, considering how utterly tiny she was. He sat to the side and watched. The tendrils’ coloring slowly began to shift, small patches of red beginning to stain the green and take over. The tip of one rested on the baby’s chest while another gently wrapped itself around her head. The others—thin, graceful, and gentle things—poked gently at different spots on her body, causing her to giggle and kick. The whole time, Eren kept up with that God-awful baby talk, smiling and chuckling as she tried to grab at the tendrils whenever they got close to her hands.

   “Her reflexes are good,” he said, briefly looking up from his hand to the King and Queen, who stood on their balcony and watched with worried eyes. “All of her vital organs are properly sized and functioning well.” She grabbed one of the tendrils and proceeded to nibble at it before spitting it back out and crinkling up her little face like it was the grossest thing she had ever tasted. It probably was. Eren laughed. “She’s just as curious as a baby should be. I noticed something a bit unusual, though.”

   “Is she in danger?” the King asked.

   “No, no, it’s nothing particularly threatening,” Eren assured him. The tendril that had been resting on her chest moved down to rest on her stomach. “It’s her digestive system. You said she wouldn’t drink from the flower, right?”

   The Queen nodded. “Gave her nectar,” she said, “but… would not take more than first drop.”

   The tendril tickled the baby’s tummy, making her laugh gleefully; she did seem to be a perfectly happy little baby, Jean thought. Was Eren actually good with kids or was it just this one in particular that he knew how to deal with? It would make sense for this baby to be easily managed, considering, well,  _ everything _ . But there was an uncharacteristic gentleness in Eren’s eyes as he looked at the little one. Eren was a good guy, sure, and he was more than capable of being emotional and caring, but he seemed… softer, when he was holding that baby.

   “Her digestive system is awfully sensitive,” he said. The Queen looked confused, not recognizing some of those words. The King whispered a translation into her ear. “It’s not that she doesn’t want to drink. She isn’t cursed and she has all of the natural instincts of your kind, I promise. Her system just can’t handle pure nectar just yet. I imagine she’ll always have a pretty sensitive stomach, so you may have to make sure she follows a specialized diet.”

   The King sighed. “What can we do for her now, though? If she doesn’t drink, she won’t grow.”

   “I understand the concern,” Eren replied, “but she will grow as long as she’s given the proper nutrients. I’m sure you do still want to raise her on the sweetpea nectar, of course; I know how important it is to your people. But she just can’t handle it the way other babies can, do you understand? You’ll have to dilute it before you give her any. Mix it in with some honey or water and she should be able to consume it that way.”

   Eren retracted the tendrils and lowered his hand. “Very well,” the King said as the Queen retrieved her baby. “We will try. Would you please stay a little while longer? We will create the mixture now, and we will feel better if you’re still here when she drinks it, just in case it doesn’t work and we need another plan.”

   Eren smiled. “Of course. I’ll be happy to stay until we’ve seen if it’ll work or not. Would it be alright if my assistant and I go for a quick walk while you’re having the mixture made?”

   “Of course, of course,” the King replied. “I will send a messenger for you when we are ready.”

   When Eren offered a temporary  _ goodbye _ and stood, Jean did the same before following him off into the woods. Once he was sure they were out of earshot of the castle, he yawned and slumped against a tree. “I thought these people drank nectar to get drunk,” he said. 

   Eren leaned against a tree across from Jean. “They use the nectar of different plants in different ways. Sweetpea nectar is the fae’s equivalent of milk when it comes to their babies. Milkweed nectar, though… they have some  _ fun _ with that shit. And don’t even get me  _ started _ on the ways they use pollen, okay. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors, but, holy fuck, the rumors don’t even come close. They  _ looooove _ that stuff.”

   “How the fuck do they even do anything with those teeth, though? Like, they can’t just survive on drinking nectar, right?”

   “Fuck, you haven’t seen them eat, have you? That shit is  _ intense _ . They’re kinda like cats, actually. Cats don’t have molars, so they tear or crunch their food up into little bits that they can swallow whole. It’s kinda like that, but they mostly eat moths and wasps.”

   “ _ Wasps? _ ”

   “Oh, yeah. Live ones, too. They catch ‘em in these nets, okay, and keep ‘em there until they’re ready to eat. They’ve evolved to have this immunity to wasp stings, so they, like, tie the fuckers up so they can’t fly away, and just go to town. Rip pieces off with their teeth and swallow them whole. It’s super fucked up, man. I do not recommend watching a fae dining session.”

   Despite the bits of pain it caused, Jean slowly slid down the tree to sit on the ground, staring blankly ahead of him with a look on his face reminiscent of a man having war flashbacks. He rested his head against the tree and struggled to find words. “A… I… They…” he barely managed. It took a minute, but he eventually gathered enough of himself to exclaim, “ _ Live fucking wasps? _ ”

   Eren just nodded, his arms crossed over his chest like it was no different from saying that humans eat dead chickens. “Live fuckin’ wasps. It’s kind of impressive, actually.”

   “I’m never going to be the same man I once was,” Jean muttered in his state of disbelief.

   “I get the feeling you’ve had a bad experience with wasps.”

   “So bad.”

   “What happened?”

   “There was, ugh, there was this lady I worked for. She ran a bakery. For the most part, she’d wrap up the leftovers from that day and send them home with her employees or give them to neighborhood kids or local homeless folks so they’d still be able to have sweet things now and then. Really nice lady, she was. But sometimes she couldn’t properly distribute the leftovers—like if they had already gone bad, y’know, from a previous day and she had overlooked them during cleanup—so she’d just throw them away. A lot of them were made with  _ really sweet shit _ , so there’d always be all kinds of bugs hangin’ out around the trash. After a while, wasps realized that there was a steady supply of bugs and fruit and shit around there, so they started building nests.” He shuddered. “There was one nest that we thought was empty because we hadn’t seen any wasps go in or out of it lately, so she sent me out there with a broom.”

   Eren’s eyes went wide and he covered his mouth. He knew where this was going, obviously, but he still leaned forward eagerly. “Don’t tell me…”

   “Oh, yeah. There were still wasps using that thing. I hit it with the handle of the broom and it fell off the side of the building and it  _ shattered _ when it hit the ground and then, like, four wasps come flying out—”

   “Holy fuck, no,” Eren interjected. “Nope. Nope.”

   “—and they, like, see me there, or whatever, and they go all attack mode. So I get chased back into the building by, like, these wasps I pissed off, and a couple more wasps that saw that there was some kind of attack party and decided to join in.”

   “They do that? Seriously?”

   “Those motherfuckers did,” Jean said. “And, well, I didn’t know that I was allergic to wasp stings—”

   “Oh,  _ no _ .”

   “—Yeah! So, I get stung by, like, two of them before I manage to get inside and everything. And the lady I worked for, right, she was really nice, but she wasn’t a doctor or anything. She told me that she had been stung before and it was no big deal as long as I didn’t mess with it, so I  _ tried _ not to mess with it, but, y’know, it was ten times worse than getting bit by a mosquito, so what am I gonna do? Manage to  _ not _ fuck with it? Fat chance. Anyway. Long story short,” he said, rolling up his sleeve to show Eren a little red spot midway between his shoulder and elbow, “that’s how I got this.”

   Eren walked over and kneeled down next to Jean to get a better look. The spot had a little indentation; curiously, he reached out and ran his fingers over it. Jean prayed that Eren figured that the goosebumps that rose on his arms were because of the cold air on his skin and not his touch. “Holy  _ shit _ ,” Eren said in actual awe. “I didn’t know that was even possible.”

   “Neither did I until it happened,” Jean replied, rolling his sleeve back down when Eren took his hand away. “Don’t fuck with wasps, dude. Don’t do it.”

   “I’ll keep that in mind.”

   “What about you? Any bad experiences with bugs?”

   “A spider gave birth in the tower once.”

   Jean’s eyebrows shot up. “No. No. No spiders gave birth in there.”

   “It did! It was a few years ago, though, so the babies are totally all dead or living in the walls or something.”

   “I changed my mind. I don’t want to hear this story.”

   “It was a black widow, too.”

   Jean let out a long, miserable sound.

   Eren was about to continue with his horror about the spider incident when they were interrupted by a fae messenger. The King and Queen were ready to try to give the baby that nectar-and-honey mixture. Eren sighed and stood up, deciding he’d have to tell Jean the rest of the story later.

 

—

 

   The King chuckled, forcing the little vial into Jean’s hands. “Please, help yourself,” he insisted.

   “I really didn’t do anything, though,” Jean said, still reluctant to accept the gift. Eren had already been given his payment for his work; the baby had loved the mixture he had suggested, and since she was now consuming the nectar the way she was supposed to—even if it was in small, diluted bits—he had been rewarded handsomely. But Jean? Jean had no idea why they were trying to give  _ him _ something. All he did was walk there with Eren and keep him company. 

   “Nonsense,” the King said. “It is an honor to our people that you came with your mentor, ready to help us even when you hardly know us.” Uh, well, Eren wasn’t teaching Jean to be a mage or anything so he really wasn’t his mentor, but he decided not to correct the fae. “This is the least we can do for you. It will lift your spirits on the trip home and make the journey easier on tired feet.”

   Rather than continue to object the way he had been doing, Jean finally caved and took the vial. It was almost as tall as the fae themselves, though a bit thinner. There was a golden liquid inside, glittering in the light. “Well, thank you very much,” he said. “I’m… honored that you valued my presence enough for this.”

   The King smiled.  _ Ugh _ . “Come back anytime, will you? Our species age differently from each other, as I’m sure you know. Kina will be a fine young lady in a few months. I fully expect you and Eren to come visit her when she is grown.”

   Oh, great. He didn’t have anything against the baby, of course, and he really didn’t dislike the fae or anything, but the idea of coming out here again was a bit stressful. Still… “I would love to,” he said, trying his best to sound convincing. “I look forward to seeing how well she grows. I’m sure she’ll be as lovely as her mother.”

   “As am I,” the King replied. “We will look forward to your next visit, as well. Have safe travels home.”

   Before Jean could come up with any more bullshit to say, the King left him. Eren tapped his shoulder and motioned towards the exit of the village. Jean followed closely behind as Armin trailed after them, his tail and ears all droopy like he hated to leave. So Jean decided to keep his discomfort a secret and never make any mention of how strange it felt to be surrounded by fae, how uncomfortable he was around them. He came up beside Eren and showed him the vial. “Do you know what this is?” he asked,

   Eren took the vial from him and opened it, taking a small sniff. “Ugh, fuck, I dunno what it is, but it smells awful.” He closed it and gave it back to Jean. “Did someone give it to you?”

   Jean nodded. “The King gave it to me. Said somethin’ about it lifting my spirits. I mean, I wanna trust him, but I’m kinda reluctant to drink it.”

   Eren sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Fuck, dude, I dunno. I’ve never had a bad experience with anything they’ve given me, so I guess, just, go for it if you want to. I’ll be here in case something goes wrong and you get sick.”

   Jean looked at the vial. He wasn’t afraid of this shit, right? It was just a little fae drink. And Eren was there for him, ready to help him through anything if it affected him negatively. He took a breath and reopened the vial, downing it in one go. He immediately started coughing. It tasted utterly  _ disgusting _ , but he managed to keep it down.

   For a long while, everything was normal. The journey home was going just as smoothly as the journey out there had. And, despite his fears that the drink may make him wish he was dead, Jean felt just the same as he had before he drank it. He supposed his feet might not have hurt as much as they did when they had been on the way towards the village, but he really wasn’t sure if that was actually a thing or if he had just convinced himself that it would work.

   But there was something he was certain of: There was a new chill in the air, something bitter and cruel. Eren looked up at the sky, a nervous knot trying to tie itself in his gut. The sky had grown clouded over and what had once been a beautiful winter blue was replaced entirely by the looming threat of a snowstorm. They weren’t even a quarter of the way home by the time the first snowflakes started to fall, not even half of the way home by the time they needed to look for shelter.

   The whole time they looked for someplace covered and warm, Eren cursed and cursed and  _ cursed.  _ Armin sniffed out a little cave-like indentation in the side of a hill a ways off the path just as the wind picked up and the snow made it hard to see. They ducked into that little almost-cave without even bothering to look at what was inside; if there were bugs, they’d squish them. If there was an animal, well, they weren’t against killing and eating it. Neither of those seemed to be necessary, though, as the little cave was empty. 

   Eren sat against the stone wall and sighed. Armin laid down next to Eren, resting his head on his lap. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is exactly what I was afraid of. God knows how long we’ll be stuck here. I dunno how long the snow will last.” 

   Jean shrugged off his pack and dug out some wood. He had originally thought it was fucking stupid to  _ bring _ firewood with them when they were going to be in a  _ literal forest _ , but now? Now he was glad they had. “Yeah, this sucks,” he said as he piled the wood between them. “At least we aren’t alone, right? It’d suck even more to be stuck out here without any company.”

   Eren leaned forward, careful to not disturb Armin, and whispered an incantation. A spark of fire ignited on his fingertips that he flicked towards the wood. It landed and the wood started to burn, giving them a nice little fire to keep warm by. “I guess so. I’m just pissed that this happened. I’ve never gotten stuck out here like this before.” He looked out. The snow was starting to pile up outside the entrance, forming a little wall that would both keep them protected from the wind and keep them trapped inside. “I dragged you out here. I got you stuck.”

   “Shut up,” Jean said, holding his hands towards the fire. “I decided to come with you. It’s not your fault.”

   The fire illuminated the small space as the wall of snow continued to build. Jean looked up towards Eren every now and then, almost captivated by the way the flames reflected in Eren’s eyes as he watched them burn. He silently cursed at himself, saying that he needed to stop being so fucking gay for, like, five minutes. 

   Armin got up and wandered to a corner of their little shelter. Eren closed his eyes and sighed again. One by one, the three of them drifted off as the wind howled outside and snow blanketed the world.

 

—

 

   Jean opened his eyes. The fire still burned, though a bit less intensely than it had been when they lit it. There was surprisingly little smoke. A side-effect of the fire coming from magic, he supposed. He yawned and reached over to his bag, digging around for pretty much anything he could use to occupy his time. He didn’t want to wake either of the others just because he’d be lonely sitting there without anything to do. His fingers brushed against the handle of a pocket knife. He grabbed it and took it out, then took out another little piece of wood from the pack. He didn’t remember why he had brought that knife with him and he knew he was absolutely  _ shit _ at whittling, but what the fuck else was there to do? He decided to try to carve a little pine tree, fully prepared for the finished product to be absolute garbage.

   “You’ve been avoiding me,” a voice said. Jean’s voice, but not really him. He took a look at the blade and bit back a frustrated sigh. Of  _ course _ his face was reflected on the metal. He thought about giving up and shoving it back down among his things, but… he didn’t. He didn’t think he had anything else to keep himself busy with. He’d just have to suffer. The reflection laughed. “Aw, come on! Pay attention to me! I missed you.”

   Jean said nothing.

   “Ugh, fuck, you’re boring, you know that?” It rolled its eyes. “So how’s that fae drink settling? You think you’re fine? That’s funny. Don’t you feel it? The tingle in your blood?”

   Jean paused for a moment. He hadn’t noticed anything before, but now that it had been said and he thought about it, his reflection was right. He didn’t feel normal anymore. He wanted to think that his reflection was wrong and that it was just the cold affecting him, but the tingling sensation running through his veins wasn’t something he had ever felt before.

   “Oh, you know what would be  _ really _ fun?” it teased. “What if  _ it will lift your spirits _ meant that it’ll make you more likely to stop being a fucking coward? I bet he knows. I bet he could tell that you’re attracted to Eren. The fae aren’t shy, you know; didn’t you notice? You saw it. You saw the way they were so happy with public displays of affection. They’d just hug and kiss and everything right in front of everyone, wouldn’t they? That must’ve bothered you. Must’ve irritated you so much that they could do whatever the fuck they wanted with each other. I bet you wished you could get close to Eren like that.”

   He dug the knife into the wood and sliced off another piece. The wood would start taking shape soon. 

   “You gotta stop being such a little bitch and just, I dunno, fucking tell him that you’re into him. It’s just  _ so funny _ that you didn’t even  _ think _ the words, ‘I really like Eren’ until I showed up. You knew it already, I know you did, but you just wouldn’t admit it, would you? You wouldn’t think about it. Wouldn’t consider it. But it’s always been true. From the first moment you saw him, right? You knocked on his door and he opened it and you saw him and you  _ knew _ .”

   He brushed some of the wood shavings towards the fire. He’d gather them all up in a little bit and put them in the fire properly.

   “I know all your stupid little fantasies about him. You’re  _ killing _ me, Jean. You  _ have _ to tell him how much you want to fuck him. Or, excuse me, how much you want  _ him _ to fuck  _ you _ . That’s more accurate, isn’t it? I mean, you saw him naked that one time and almost passed out.”

   Okay, you know what? That wasn’t fucking true. Yes, he did see Eren naked and the thought did cross his mind that he was particularly attractive, but he didn’t almost  _ pass out _ . He wasn’t  _ that _ gay and sex-deprived. 

   “Bullshit! You totally are!”

   Jean was about to tell his reflection to shut the fuck up when Eren shifted and grumbled softly as he woke up. “Fuck,” he muttered. “What time is it?”

   Jean shoved the knife back into his pack. “I dunno. We’re all snowed in.”

   Eren looked towards the entrance. Sure enough, it was completely covered in snow; they’d have to dig themselves out when they were ready to leave. He sat up and looked around; Armin was still sleeping in his little corner. “Seriously, I’m really sorry about this.”

   Jean shook his head. “Nah. Not a big deal.” He laid his carving down next to him. It wasn’t very pretty, but it wasn’t as bad as he had thought it might be so far. “Hey, you’ve got the blanket from the tent, right?”

   Eren grabbed his pack and opened it, pulling out the big blanket they had slept under in the tent. “Yeah. Come over here, alright? I wanna use it too.”

   Oh. They had slept close-ish in the tent because, well, it was a fucking tent. They had slept in the same bed that time they were both drunk as shit. But this felt different. Even though this place was a little bit bigger than the tent was, it somehow seemed more intimate. Still, Jean did was he was told and scooted over to sit next to Eren. Eren draped the blanket over the both of them.

   The tingle in Jean’s blood got worse. He shifted awkwardly and swallowed hard. “I think… I think that thing I drank is fucking with me,” he said. “I feel really weird.”

   Eren reached over and put a hand on Jean’s forehead. “You feel a bit hot. You weren’t too close to the fire, were you?”

   “I haven’t gotten any closer to it than I was when we first got settled in.”

   “What’s the problem, then? Are you getting sick?”

   “I’m not sure. It’s like… you know how, if you drink too much coffee or whatever, you feel like you can’t sit still or you’ll literally fucking die?”

   “Yeah.”

   “It’s like that.”

   “Oh. I mean, that makes sense,” Eren said. “He said it’d lift your spirits, right? That must be fae for  _ it’ll give you a fuckload of energy _ or something. You think you’ll be okay?”

   “Probably? I just… I dunno. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s not just like I’m on a caffeine trip. It feels like everything is… off. Feels like I’m not really here. Everything’s getting all, like, fuck, fuzzy?”

   “Just try to relax, alright?” Eren said, wrapping his arm around Jean’s shoulders. “Here. Lay your head on me.” Jean did so, his heart hammering in his chest as he did. “There ya go. That better? You’ve been sitting straight up this whole time. I’m sure that’s not helping. Stretch your legs out a little. Yeah, that’s better. It’s not good to stay all curled up like you were.”

   Jean sighed and tried to relax. His legs twitched a little as they begged for some kind of activity. “I don’t wanna cause more trouble while we’re already trapped in a fucking cave.”

   “You’re fine, Jean. It’s alright. I told you I’d be here to take care of you if that stuff started fucking with you.”

   “Still…”

   “Stop,” Eren said. “Stop freaking out on me. Just relax. I’ve got you.” Unaware that the action would keep Jean from being able to relax, he pressed a reassuring kiss to the top of his head. “We’ll all survive this just fine.”

   Jean closed his eyes and tried to calm down even though he wished that the kiss had been to the lips instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate to say it but alkfhskdj I think I'll be finishing this story up with a couple more chapters,, I really enjoy writing it but I know where I want it to go from here to the end, so, I dunno, if anyone has anything that they'd like for me to include soon I'd love to hear about it so I can work in more fun stuff for you guys before we finish here ;u;


	9. I Want To Help You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren finds out about Jean's... problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeeeyyyyy I'm actually posting this one at a decent time today good job me

   Jean shivered. What time was it? He was so  _ cold.  _ He felt fingers running gently through his hair and opened his eyes, looking up to see Eren looking off into the distance. Jean followed his gaze without moving his head; the wall of snow that had been keeping them in their little cave had been cleared away either by melt or human hands, revealing a world still mostly covered in a thick white blanket. He sighed softly. 

   “You awake?” Eren asked. 

   “Yeah,” Jean replied. “Do you have  _ any _ idea what time it is? Or, hell, what  _ day _ it is?”

   Eren shrugged. “Armin peeked outside as soon as I woke up. He thought it was getting close to noon and that must have been half an hour ago. I’m assuming it’s the day after we went to sleep here.”

   “Where is Armin? I’d look, but, I dunno. I’m pretty comfy here.”

   “Dork,” Eren said. “I’m not sure where he is, exactly. He went out to go play around in the snow.”

   “Does he do that whenever it snows?”

   “Pretty much. He loves the snow.”

   “That’s cute.” Jean yawned and closed his eyes again; he wasn’t going to go back to sleep, but laying there with his head in Eren’s lap and Eren’s finger in his hair was beyond relaxing. “Do you like snow?”

   “I guess? I mean, I don’t look forward to snow, but I can appreciate it when it’s here. It’s pretty. What about you? You like snow?”

   “I hate snow.”

   “Why?”

   Jean paused. He didn’t like to relive the memory, but he trusted Eren. He really did. “Do you… remember what I told you that day? The day we got super drunk and all that?”

   “Yeah, you said that it was the anniversary of something bad. And then… you told me something else. When we were drunk. Fuck, what was it?”

   “Magic.”

   “ _ Fuuuck.  _ That’s right. You, uh, you had magic once. Before…”

   “Before they beat it outta me, yeah.” He readjusted his head. “It was winter. There was a lot of snow that day. The kids around there didn’t like me, so I’d always play by myself. Made a lot of tiny snowmen. They liked to hunt me down to destroy them if they could. And… they just… the snowman wasn’t enough fun for them that day, I guess.” An image weaseled its way back into his mind, an image he had been trying to forget. Red against the white, his blood spilling out onto the snow as the attack went on and on and  _ on.  _ He had focused on it. He felt the pain of their blows, but his attention fixated itself on the colors. The way the red, hot and sticky, left marks in the snow as it melted underneath the sudden warmth. The way the red spread out across the white like paint on a canvas. He supposed that, under different circumstances, it could have been beautiful. “I’ve hated the snow ever since,” he said. “Nothing… nothing would have happened that day if there hadn’t been snow.”

   Eren’s fingers stilled. “I’m sorry,” he said softly; Jean was pretty sure he had never heard Eren use that tone of voice before. He had apologized to Jean before, of course, but this went deeper than that. Like the words came from his soul, the very center of his being. “I really fucked up, bringing you out here and getting you caught like this.”

   “Don’t worry about it,” Jean replied. “It’s not like you can control the weather. Or that you knew about my… thing. I hate when you act like everything you can’t control is your fault somehow.”

   “God. You sound like Mika.”

   “It’s true, though. There are just things that you can’t control. You should learn to live with that.”

   “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

   “You’re the worst.”

   “But you still stay with me, so what does that say about you?”

   Fair enough.

 

—

 

   Jean knelt down by the edge of the water. After a little while longer of laying together in the cave, he and Eren had decided that it was time for them to scout around and see if they’d be able to get home or if they’d need to manage to stay alive out there for another night. Eren had recognized the area they were in, one of the many bits of knowledge he had picked up over his years of being the mage of Shiganshina, and asked Jean to go check on a little pond over, quote, “thataway.” Jean had found it easily enough, but still.  _ Thataway _ ? That was how Eren gave directions? Jean was suddenly very grateful that Shiganshina was a small town and he could find everything on his own.

   The good news was that the water wasn’t frozen. There was frost around the shore like it had been frozen at some point in the night, but under the light of the sun—a winter sun, but the sun nevertheless—the ice had melted and a crystal clear pool reflected the sky in a perfect mirror image. And the water reflected his own face as he leaned over and cupped some water in his hands to splash his face with. It was cold, too fucking cold to mess with, but he had a tendency to not feel human if he didn’t wash his face in the morning. He splashed his face and wiped his hands on his pants, looking down at the water and sighing. 

   The water was so clear he thought it was absurd for a reflection of him to exist in it, and yet, there it was. Staring back at him. Grinning. Like it knew that all morning, the whole time he had been with Eren, the tingling in his blood had persisted. That it had gotten even worse. That he hadn’t just been thinking about being close to Eren, that he hadn’t just been content to lay with him, but that he had always been  _ distinctly  _ aware of his situation. 

   His reflection knitted its fingers together and rested his chin on his hands, grinning at him the way it always did. “I told you he knew. The King, I mean. He knew you’re attracted to Eren so he gave you something that would make you more likely to act on those feelings.”

   “That’s not true,” Jean whispered; Eren and Armin were off God knew where, so he let himself talk to the reflection. “It’s not… it’s not like that.”

   The reflection raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Are you trying to tell me that you  _ aren’t  _ attracted to Eren? That you aren’t  _ this fucking close _ to being in love with him? We both know that isn’t true.”

   Jean shook his head. “No. I… fuck,  _ fuck you.  _ I’m not denying that I’m  _ attracted _ to him. But I’m better at keeping secrets than that.”

   “Oh, honey. You don’t know anything, do you? The fae are  _ different.  _ Maybe  _ humans _ don’t pick up on your bullshit, but the fae do. The fae know those things, couldn’t you tell? I mean, damn, some of those little bitches were about to start fucking on street corners. They know physical relationships. They  _ know.  _ You can’t keep that kind of thing a secret from them.”

   “Does it  _ matter _ ? We left the fae village. As far as anyone is concerned, I’m fine. I’m just as great as I was before we went there.”

   “Jean, if dreams lasted any longer than they do, you would’ve come in your pants, like,  _ twice.  _ That fae shit really fucked you up.”

   Jean struck the water with his hand, not like it would do any good. The water just went right back into the same position it had been in immediately before. 

   “ _ Anyway _ ,” his reflection said, “I’m almost certain that those fae were tired of you looking at Eren like that the whole time you guys were there. I know  _ I’m  _ tired of it.”

   “ _ You _ aren’t real!” Jean exclaimed in his frustration, standing up in a hurry and turning his back to the water—

   —and walking straight into Eren. 

   He could practically feel the blood drain from his face as the shame of being caught doing something weird crept up the back of his neck. He swallowed hard, praying that the long silence between them only  _ felt _ long and was really nothing much at all. 

   “Are you okay?” Eren asked, breaking the silence and the stillness between them, reaching up to feel of Jean’s forehead. “You’re hot again. You must have a fever, fuck. What’s going on out here? Are you—are you hallucinating? Is it that bad? I need to get you home.” He grabbed Jean by the wrist and started pulling him, rambling on and on about how he needed to be more careful and probably shouldn’t have let Jean drink that thing the King gave him. 

   Jean yanked his wrist out of Eren’s grasp. “I’m not sick,” he said as Eren turned to look at him. “I’m… not sure if I’m hallucinating. And I’m sorry, okay? I—I lied to you. I told you that I put that one potion away and it was a lie. I broke the bottle. I broke it, and I got that shit all over my hands, and ever since then things’ve been pretty weird.”

   “ _ Fuck _ ,” Eren said. “What’s going on? Why didn’t you tell me? What do you mean you aren’t sure if you’re hallucinating?”

   Jean sighed. He looked around and saw a little log still covered in snow. He walked over to it, brushed the snow off, and sat down. Eren came over to sit next to him. “I didn’t tell you because I was scared,” Jean told him, staring at the ground between his boots. “I didn’t want you to get mad at me for breaking something you had worked hard on. Really, I’m  _ fine _ , it’s just… one little thing. One really weird thing. It’s dumb, really.”

   Eren brushed some of Jean’s hair from his face. “Have I… been that shitty? I know I’m a fuckin’ piece of work, but, you were really scared I’d get super mad at you over something trivial like that?”

   “I’ve been chased out of towns for less than that, Eren.”

   “The tower isn’t a town. It’s our home.” He shook his head. “We can talk about that later. Just tell me what the potion did to you.”

   Jean searched for the right words. How could he say  _ my reflection is talking to me  _ without sounding insane? Then again, it was magic, wasn’t it? Magic was inherently insane. “I… ugh. When I look at something—anything, really—that provides a relatively undistorted reflection, it… talks to me. It has a mind of its own. Its actions don’t match my own half the time, and the other time it keeps up with me perfectly while taunting me with some stupid bullshit  _ secrets _ it’s mad at me for keeping.”

   Despite the worry he felt, there was an interested light burning in Eren’s eyes. “What kind of secrets? Ah, never mind. You don’t have to answer that. They’re secrets for a reason. Just, uh, any reflective surface? Is that why you hit the water like that?”

   Jean nodded. “It likes to push boundaries and I can only take so much. I, uh, guess that must’ve been a pretty weird thing to see, huh?”

   “You could say that. But I was more worried than anything else. Are you sure you’re okay?”

   “Yeah, it’s alright. I mean, it’s annoying, but I’m okay.”

   Eren sighed heavily. “When we get back home I’ll have you sit down in the workshop and see what I can find. I mean, assuming you don’t mind an examination.”

   Good  _ lord _ Jean was glad that there was nothing reflective within his line of sight. “Uh, I guess that’s fine,” he said, pushing impure thoughts from his mind. “Like what you did with the baby?”

   “Eeeeh. Kinda. Kinda not. I mean, she’s  _ tiny _ , so it’s easy to examine her for magic bullshit. Grown ass humans always take a bit longer. We’ll see how it goes. You got any allergies I need to be aware of? Y’know, leather, latex, that kinda shit?”

   “Fuckin’ hell, dude! What the fuck kind of exam are you  _ talking _ about?”

   Eren laughed. “A normal one, I swear! I was just joking.”

   Jean gave Eren a little shove and knocked him off the log. “Fuck you, dude.”

   Eren just grinned.

 

—

 

   After that, the trip home was relatively uneventful. Armin dug a couple more cute things out of the snow for Eren to put in his bag for their collection—at least, Jean figured it was a collection; he still hadn’t asked—and Jean tripped a couple times and got a face full of snow, but other than that, the world was quiet. It was almost like the three of them were the only beings alive in the world. The rest had all faded away into nothingness, leaving behind only silence and snow. And for the first time in a long time, Jean didn’t look at the snow and imagine his blood splattering over it again. It was just snow. Was it because he was in good company? Was it because he thought the way Armin went romping through the snow drifts and diving into it like a fox was cute? Was it because of the silence, the utter absence of laughter or talking or yelling or  _ any _ of the sounds he associated with that moment in time? Or was it, maybe, because he felt so… safe?

   He wasn’t alone anymore. It was a weird thing to think about. He had spent his childhood playing alone, walking to school by himself, and coming home to his mother without any sad goodbyes or promises to his classmates that they’d hang out again tomorrow. He spent his adolescence doing mostly the same thing, only instead of playing by himself, he was doing things like exploring the nearby forests or drawing in his room. Sure, he met a nice guy named Marco about that time and hung out with him now and then, but after so long of not having friends, he was pretty shit at social interaction. And after that? He couldn’t afford to make a connection with anyone, not really. He learned how to deal with different people as he moved around. He could be friendly, but he could never be someone’s friend. He’d just pack up his shit and leave again in a few days, anyway. Being with Eren was the longest he had stayed in one place since he left Trost.

   And, for fuck’s sake, he felt  _ safe _ . If he was lonely or bored or sad or excited or talkative or  _ anything _ , all he had to do was go find Eren in the tower somewhere. He hadn’t been too sure about Eren at first, considering how easily Eren hired him and how little they knew about each other, but the guy really had grown on him. Sure, Eren could be a huge fucking asshole to people, but so could Jean. It wasn’t that they had  _ bonded _ over their mutual ability to be obnoxious dickheads, even if it might have seemed like it; Jean wasn’t sure  _ what _ they had really bonded over besides their proximity and work relationship. It didn’t really matter, though, did it? It didn’t matter how they got there. It didn’t matter what had made them trust each other so much. It didn’t matter what brought them together as friends instead of just being just an employee and a boss. It didn’t matter  _ what _ it was, just that it had done what it did. 

   They walked close enough together on the way home that Jean could practically feel Eren’s warmth, and every time he glanced over, he saw that familiar dark face in a stunning contrast to the whiteness of the snowy world. And sometimes Eren would look over at him in return—those  _ eyes _ of his doing everything in their power to grab the breath in Jean’s lungs and rip it away—and ask him if something was up. Jean would shake his head and say, no, not really, he was just looking at something over there.

   As long as Eren was next to him, the snow didn’t bother him so much. Because he was safe with Eren. He had grown, of course, and could take care of himself if he needed to, but he knew that Eren would be right there with him if he needed it. Eren would try to keep him safe if he could. Eren would be there to help him off the ground, help him brush the dirt off his clothes, help him tend to his wounds. Hell, Eren had already taken care of Jean so much. From the very first work thing they did together, when they went to gather those fucking flowers and Jean touched a dead body and ended up passing out, Eren was already taking care of him; had it been difficult? Had it been hard for Eren to pick Jean up off the ground and carry him all the way back to the tower, all the way back up to his room? Eren… fuck, Eren was just so  _ special _ . Jean didn’t think he’d ever be able to accurately put it into words, the way it felt to know that Eren was there for him and on his side and willing to look after him like that.

   Then Jean imagined his reflection saying  _ I told you that you were in love with him _ and mentally cursed at himself. Was that true? It couldn’t be. He didn’t  _ feel _ like he was in love. Wasn’t being in love supposed to be, like, this sticky, clinging feeling that never left you alone? Wasn’t it supposed to drive people crazy? Aside from the part where his reflection was talking to him, Jean didn’t  _ feel _ crazy. He didn’t feel much different than he normally did, other than that constant sense of safety and security. But that wasn’t love, right? There had to be more to it than that, right? He glanced over at Eren as the tower came into view. A smile spread over Eren’s face and he looked over to Jean and the look on Eren’s face made him feel like everything was  _ right _ in the world and—

   Ah, fuck. That was love, wasn’t it? Motherfucker.

   Eren let Jean drop his stuff off at his room and get washed up before insisting that he come up to the workshop for that exam. He said something about how he was sorry that he hadn’t realized sooner that something was wrong but that, now that he did know, he was going to do everything he could to help get rid of the problem. So when Jean’s things were all unpacked again and he had bathed and gotten into some fresh clothes, he headed up to the workshop. Somehow, in the time it took for Jean to take that bath, Eren had also gotten a bath of his own  _ and _ set up the room for, well, whatever was about to happen.

   Now, Jean trusted Eren. Of course he did. Apparently he was  _ in love _ with the guy, so trust came naturally. But the replacement of the cauldron with a rather plain chair and the array of mysterious objects scattered around nearby tables was a bit disconcerting. Still, when Eren told him to take a seat and get comfortable, he did.

   “This isn’t gonna hurt, right?”

   “It shouldn’t,” Eren replied. “If it does, just, I dunno. Kick me or somethin’.”

   “Got it. I’ve always been looking for an excuse to kick you.”

   Eren rolled his eyes. “Reflection. Did it bother you while you were in the bathroom?”

   “Are you kidding? Of course it did. It’s a constant thing.”

   Eren stretched his arms out over his head before walking over to stand in front of where Jean sat. “Alright. Just hold still. This shouldn’t  _ hurt _ , but it might be a bit uncomfortable. Just try to relax.”

   Jean put his hands in his lap and nodded. “I will kick you if I need to.”

   “I know you will,” Eren said, putting his hands on either side of Jean’s face. Jean could feel the surge of heat to his cheeks; why was he even embarrassed by this? He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at Eren during this. Eren pressed his fore and middle fingers to each of Jean’s temples, his ring and little fingers to his jawbone, and his thumbs to the inner corners of his eyes. With Eren’s thumbs so close to his eyes, Jean was glad that he at least had a good reason to have his eyes shut now. He heard Eren mutter a few things, nonsense words that Jean didn’t understand, and he felt a gentle… prodding, he thought, at all of the places where Eren’s fingertips touched him. “Just hold still,” Eren reminded him.

   It felt like several  _ worms  _ were weaseling their way into Jean’s body from the places he was being touched. He thought of the tendrils Eren had used to examine that fae baby; it must be something like that, right? Except with the baby, Eren could just examine all of her from the outside since she was so tiny. Jean, though, he didn’t get the same treatment. It was true that it didn’t hurt, but holy  _ fuck _ was it uncomfortable. Underneath the skin, inside of him, the things felt around, running over everything they could touch. Jean struggled to stay still when Eren pressed their foreheads together and muttered a few more words. His thoughts suddenly went foggy and he struggled to keep a hold of even one of them, desperately grasping for something but failing every time. One by one, every thought in his head slipped away until there was nothing left. He was practically floating now, the only thing keeping him tied to the real world being the warmth of Eren’s touch. He heard a whimper coming from somewhere but couldn’t even manage to wonder who or what was making the noise; he had no idea that it was him.

   His legs twitched as the tendrils—or whatever the  _ fuck _ they were really called—grew longer, slowly making their way across the rest of his body. A few wrapped around his arms before burying themselves into his hands while others dug into the flesh of his torso and touched every rib, every organ, every blood vessel. And still others went further, wrapping around his thighs and his calves, nearly tying his legs together by the ankles but, thankfully, coming up short. Then, all at once, it felt like they caught fire, burning into him even though there was no heat, no evidence of an actual fire. His whole body reacted to that, jerking to try to get away from the sensation but failing to do so. By that point, he was blissfully unaware of pretty much everything his body did. He didn’t realize how hard he was trying to make the sensation stop. He didn’t know that the continued whimpers and cries came from him.

   He really,  _ really _ didn’t like this, not that he could even cling onto that hatred; though he was aware of the physical discomfort and instinctively knew that he hated it, he couldn’t focus on anything. He didn’t know how much time passed before the tendrils began to unwind themselves, slowly retreating and taking all of their nasty effects with them, letting him settle back into his own mind. Eren’s thumbs moved away from Jean’s eyes, so he opened them to try to get his bearings. His breath caught when he opened his eyes just to be looking straight into Eren’s—then he looked a little closer and said, “There’s a bit of yellow in them, isn’t there?”

   Eren rolled his eyes. “Yeah. There is.” Then he ended the physical contact, taking a couple of steps back to give Jean room to breathe. “Are you okay? Really. You didn’t look very good.”

   Jean nodded, albeit a bit weakly. “I’m alright. Did you… did you find anything?”

   Instead of directly answering, Eren walked over to one of the tables in the room and grabbed a handheld mirror. He brought it over and held it up in front of Jean. “Your reflection. Is it doing anything?”

   Jean stared at the mirror for a long time, waiting for it to start moving or talking or  _ anything _ . It had never fully minded its business. Even if it perfectly matched his movements, it would still talk to him. But now? There was nothing. Just himself. Himself and silence as he looked at the reflection of himself. He allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief and slump back in the chair. “There’s nothing,” he said. “It’s not doing anything. It’s just me.”

   Eren smiled, mostly to himself; a man had a right to be proud of the things he accomplished, after all, and he had just gotten rid of something that had been bothering Jean quite a lot. “I found traces of the potion pretty much everywhere. If you had told me about it sooner, I might not have had to go full-body on you, but that’s no big deal. We got it dealt with. I found all the pieces and burned them out of existence.”

   “Seriously? You  _ burned _ them?”

   “With a special type of fire-based magic, yes. It works on a cellular level. Finds all the bad shit and kills it without hurting the good shit.” He went to put the mirror back on the table. “You shouldn’t have any more trouble with the reflection thing.  _ Tell me _ if you do, okay? Tell me if there’s ever any problems. Don’t be afraid to tell me things, Jean. Seriously. I… I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I want to help you as much as I possibly can.”

   “I’m not afraid of you, Eren. I’m, ugh, I guess I’m afraid of people being mad at me. The last time people were really mad at me, they were angry that I  _ existed _ and beat the magic out of me. I don’t put  _ you _ on that level, I would never do that, but whenever someone is genuinely upset at me, I just… kinda shut down.” He sighed. “I’ll try to be better about that kind of thing.”

   “That’s all I ask.”

 

—

 

   Eren sat down at the table. “Hey, Jean,” he said. “Guess what.”

   Jean looked over his shoulder from where he stood making their breakfast. It had been about a week since the whole thing where the  _ bad shit _ had been burned from his cells, and, damn, it felt so good to be able to use the silverware without being paranoid that he’d pick up a spoon and start hearing his own voice talking to him. “What?” he asked; he could never be bothered to actually participate in guessing games like that.

   “Well,” Eren began, “Mikasa is coming over today, remember?” Jean nodded. “Okay, so, she’s going up north for a little while. Some crazy shit happens up there this time of year and she just  _ loves _ to go fuck around with it all, so she’ll be gone for a couple weeks. And you know what? Armin came to my room last night, y’know, in his human form, and he tells me that he’s going to go up there with Mika. Says he’s never gone that far north and she always says that she had such a great time when she gets back, so he wants to go with her this year to see what he can see. And I’m not gonna tell him  _ no _ , even if he’s technically  _ my _ familiar, y’know? He’s my friend, so I want him to go out and have fun every now and then. No big deal. So when Mika gets here, she’ll leave with Armin and we won’t see them for awhile.”

   “Aw,” Jean said. “That’s gonna be really weird. I’m used to him wandering around here.”

   “I know, right? It’s gonna  _ suck _ ,” Eren replied with a tiny little groan. “But! There’s a silver lining.”

   “Do tell.”

   “Well, for about the next week, I don’t have any appointments with anyone.”

   “None?”

   “Not a one.  _ And _ , our supplies are all fully stocked up. So unless some kind of emergency happens, we don’t have a single bit of  _ work _ to do for a good few days.”

   “You’re joking, right? There’s no way we  _ actually _ have a week off of work.”

   “God, I didn’t think it was right either. I checked, like, six separate calendars and—”

   “—Wait, we have six calendars?”

   Eren nodded, a bit embarrassed but refusing to show it too much. “You know how I am about remembering stuff. I have to write it down pretty much everywhere, so. Yes, we have six calendars. But like I was saying, okay, I checked all the fuckin’ calendars, and they all match up! We  _ genuinely _ don’t have any work scheduled for a week.” He grinned. “So. How would you like for us to spend our break?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3ccccc


	10. Help Me Understand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean makes a decision. There's something he has to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imma be real with y'all I know I've marketed this fic as pretty chill since the start but I absolutely started writing it with the intention of these losers fucking eventually so. Pretty much everything after the first break (y'know, when I split the chapter up with — breaks) is just. smutty in nature so if y'all aren't into that lmao there's ya fair warning

   Jean stared into the mirror. His reflection was just himself, staring back without saying anything Jean didn’t say or making any movements he didn’t make. And for a moment, he almost missed the damn thing. If it was still around, it would have rolled its eyes and told Jean to march his ass upstairs and just fucking get it over with, to just fucking tell Eren how he felt once and for all. Because that was what Jean wanted to do. Well, no, that wasn’t true. He didn’t _want_ to tell Eren. He _needed_ to. If he didn’t get it off his chest, he was pretty sure he was going to fucking _explode_. Ever since that day when they had been walking home from the village and Jean realized just what his feelings truly were, he had been agonizing over how to go about saying it. With Armin gone off with Mikasa for awhile, he had plenty of chances to do it without being overheard, but, fuck, the whole thing was _terrifying._ He’d never been in love. Never had a real _relationship_ with anyone. He had, admittedly, gone out and had a few one-night stands over the years, but that was different. Completely different. It was easy to tell a stranger that they were really attractive and, if they were into it, he’d like to have sex with them. It was _infinitely_ harder to tell Eren, the guy he lived and worked with, that he was in love with him. 

   He took a deep breath. At this time of night, Eren would be up in his room, sitting on his couch reading a book or working on some plan for a new experiment. That was the type of thing he could only do at night; he was able to make progress while not having to try to keep himself from falling asleep from boredom. Eren was the kind of guy who just couldn’t stand to sit still if he could avoid it. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t focus on lots of written words without getting hopelessly bored and going the fuck to sleep. Y’know, maybe he shouldn’t do it after all. Eren was probably interested in something and Jean would hate to interrupt him and—

   Jean shook his head. It was okay. He could  _ do this.  _ He had to do this.

   By the time he stepped out of the bathroom and back into the hall, he had already convinced himself once again that this was a  _ terrible  _ idea. He almost retreated back into the bathroom, but he forced himself to keep going forward, straight towards Eren. He had spent too long  _ running.  _ That was how he got to Eren’s side in the first place, he supposed—if he hadn’t run away from Trost and  _ kept _ running, he never would’ve gotten here. He was thankful that he had run straight to Eren, he really was, but by ending up here and settling down, he realized that he was tired of running. His legs refused to carry him away again. His lungs screamed at him to take a break. 

   He didn’t want to run away from this, too.

   Anxiety filled every inch of his being, threatening to boil over with every step he took up those stairs. What would he do if Eren turned him down? He wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d have to run again after all. At least if he had to pack up and run again, he’d be running with the knowledge that he had tried. That was all he could do for himself at this point. 

   By the time he got up to the workshop, his hands were trembling and his legs felt weak. The attic-style staircase that led up into Eren’s room was down, inviting him to keep climbing, to do what he came here to do. He stared at them for a long moment. This was his chance to turn around and go back down to his room and pretend like this walk had never happened.

   He began to climb the stairs. He could do this.

   “Hey, Eren?” he called. “You decent?”

   “Yeah, come on up,” Eren replied. When Jean got up into his room, Eren put a bookmark into the book he was reading and snapped it shut, laying it down on the side table. He had been all curled up in the corner of the couch where the cushions met the arm, surrounded by fluffy pillows and covered in soft blankets, but sat up properly when Jean walked in. “Hey, are you okay?” Eren asked, noticing the anxiety on Jean’s face. “You don’t look so good. Here, come sit next to me. What’s going on?”

   Jean nodded and walked over to the couch. He sat down, sure, but he didn’t let himself get too comfortable. He realistically knew that Eren wouldn’t be cruel to him if he didn’t feel the same, but… if Eren rejected him, he’d like to be able to get up and leave with as little resistance as possible. “I’m okay,” he said, staring down at the floor, too embarrassed to look at Eren. “I just… need to talk to you about something.”

   Eren leaned a little ways towards Jean. “Of course. Just relax, okay? You don’t need to be worried about whatever it is.”

   “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just that I, uh, don’t really know where to start.”

   “I mean, the beginning might be a good place.”

   Jean rolled his eyes. “Fuck off. Look, I—I’ve never said anything like this before, so, I mean, I don’t fucking know what to do.” His whole body felt  _ wrong _ , like he was going to get physically sick if he stayed there. But he couldn’t leave. He  _ couldn’t.  _ “I… fuck. I’ve told you about all the moving around I’ve done. You know about all the bullshit that happened to me back in Trost. You—I don’t think I’ve ever trusted anyone as much as I trust you and it’s fucking embarrassing to say that, but… you just, I dunno, make me feel safe, I guess? You’re fucking annoying most of the time. You’re loud and obnoxious and you’re a total fucking  _ mess.  _ I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as all over the place as you. You’re always going on about stupid shit and doing dangerous stuff. That time when you introduced me to that mentor of yours—what was his name? The old short guy? Oh, Levi, that’s it—I couldn’t believe that you had been able to  _ survive _ his teaching you. I felt like I was gonna die and I was only around him for, like, a fucking hour. So, I dunno how you do it. If anything, I should be  _ afraid _ of you. I should be  _ scared  _ of all of the crazy shit you can do, I should be living in fear of your short-ass temper, I should be freaked the fuck out every  _ single _ time you tell me that you need my help with some magic bullshit, but—fuck, Eren, I’m  _ not. _ ”

   Eren raised an eyebrow. “So, did you come in here all nervous just to tell me that you don’t think you’re as afraid of me as you should be?”

   Jean shook his head. “No. God, that’s not it. I can’t—I can’t fucking figure any of this out. I don’t know what to do or what to say or  _ anything. _ ” He was vaguely aware of the wavering in his voice. He couldn’t do anything to fix it, though, not when there was so much going through his mind at once. So much he wanted to say, so much he didn’t know how to. He took a shaky breath. “I just—I don’t—I—”

   Jean jumped a little when Eren put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” he said, his voice even and calm. “It’s okay. Relax, Jean. Please calm down. You’re alright. It’s just the two of us.” He smiled. “Look, I know that I can be a handful. I know that I have a lot of shitty days and act like a total douchebag. But you know what? I had a lot more of them before you came around. Ever since you’ve been here, I’ve managed to calm down a lot. Pft, when Mika was here the other day, you left the room for a minute and she took full advantage of it. Started teasin’ me about bein’ different from the way I was before. I started thinkin’ about it and it  _ kinda  _ pisses me off, you know that? How fucking dare you come here as my  _ assistant  _ and lull me into not being a huge dick all the time?”

   That, at least, made Jean smile and chuckle. “Sorry. I know how much you love being a huge dick.”

   Eren shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to live with it. Seriously, though. Don’t be embarrassed about feeling comfortable with me, alright? Because I’m comfortable with you, too. More than I should be, considering the kind of person I am.”

   Jean managed to look over at Eren. “It’s more than that, though.”

   “What is it, then? Help me understand.”

   “I…” He looked away again. His voice dropped significantly, all the way down from a wavering version of his normal volume to barely a whisper. He’d only be able to say it if he said it as quietly as he possibly could. “I think… I think I love you.” That was a lie, of course; he didn’t  _ think  _ it, no, he  _ knew _ . He just couldn’t say it for sure yet. He couldn’t do that much right then. 

   A long, long silence stretched out between them. At first, Jean wasn’t sure that Eren had heard him, but judging by the way Eren stayed silent instead of asking Jean to repeat himself, he reached the conclusion that Eren knew exactly what he said and just didn’t know how to respond. It took all of his strength to not stand and leave, to fucking  _ run _ regardless of the fact that he hadn’t gotten an answer yet. He wasn’t sure he could take it. He felt like he was going to fall apart. Fear coursed through his veins like blood. What was taking so long? Why wouldn’t Eren just hurry up and say it? It would only take a second to say  _ I feel the same _ or  _ I don’t feel that way about you _ . But he was dragging it out, dragging it out, dragging it out—and Jean’s paranoia was rising by the millisecond. 

   He was just about to start vehemently apologizing when Eren suddenly kissed Jean’s cheek. “You’re such a fucking idiot,” he said. 

   Jean looked over at him again. “What?”

   There was still that stupid sweet smile on Eren’s face, luring Jean to the precipice of comfort but not quite close enough to fall. “I said that you’re an idiot. It’s like your stupid, idiot brain didn’t hear anything I just said. Didn’t I just tell you that you’ve gotten me to be a bit of a better person? You really don’t have any idea what that means? Did _ none _ of that sink in?”

   Jean shook his head. 

   Eren rolled his eyes. “ _ Jesus _ , you’re dumb. Sometimes I really wonder about you. Jean, nobody else has ever had that kind of effect on me. God, are you really gonna make me say it? You… you make me feel like I’m not ever gonna have to worry about being on my own for anything. Feels like you’re always gonna be by my side, and I wanna be at yours, too, okay?”

   “So… you… you aren’t gonna reject me? Like, for real? You aren’t gonna try to present your rejection as a cute fluffy pillow or something?”

   “Holy fuck, dude,” Eren groaned. Then he made a particular decision: Jean was, evidently, too dense to understand what Eren was trying to  _ say _ , so he’d just have to  _ show  _ him. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea and maybe it’d be better for Eren to just suck it up and  _ say  _ that he was into Jean too, but damn if he wasn’t gonna do it anyway. In one moment, Jean was looking at Eren with an uncharacteristically vulnerable expression. In the next, Eren was pulling Jean close to him and kissing him the way he had wanted to ever since he tucked Jean into bed after carrying him home after the incident in the hills. Cradled in his arms, then tucked into bed with a peaceful expression on his face… it has almost been too much. He had wanted  _ so badly  _ to kiss Jean then, but Jean was, y’know,  _ unconscious _ , so Eren didn’t go through with it; he was fucked up, definitely, and a walking disaster, but he wasn’t the kind of man who would kiss someone who wasn’t conscious to kiss back or punch him in the gut. But now? Now Jean was next to him, saying that he might be in  _ love _ —honestly, though, when Eren saw the look in Jean’s eyes, he was pretty sure that  _ I think _ wasn’t the  _ full _ truth—with him, and Eren didn’t have a reason to keep his hands to himself anymore. 

   Jean made a tiny sound of surprise when Eren’s lips met his. For a second—just a second—his body froze as his mind struggled to catch up; was this real? Was this seriously happening? After all the late night dreams and afternoon daydreams, was Eren really actually finally kissing him? The heat told him that, yes, this  _ was _ happening.

   And, fuck, he practically  _ melted. _

   His muscles relaxed and he managed to pull himself together enough to kiss back, shoving all of those fears of rejection he had had out the fucking window and getting lost in the moment. Nothing else mattered as long as he could feel all of this; Eren’s left hand on the side of Jean’s face, Eren’s right hand wandering aimlessly around Jean’s body, Eren’s lips, Eren’s breath.  _ Eren.  _

   Jean was breathless when Eren pulled away. “You get it?” Eren asked, a little short of breath, too. “‘M not gonna reject you. Gonna—gonna keep you all to myself. Not gonna let anyone else have you.”

   Jean couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t want anyone else,” he replied. He  _ pretty _ sure that this was _ actually _ happening, but he still wasn’t quite positive. In any case, he was gonna go for it. “‘M all yours.”

 

—

 

   As it turned out, Eren was… actually pretty possessive; hearing Jean say that he didn’t want anyone else kicked Eren’s naturally obnoxious nature of dominance into high gear. It wasn’t that he would force Jean to stay with him or anything, but as soon as Jean had said that he was all his, it was like Eren’s sense of self-control snapped like a fucking twig. Jean had barely gotten it out of his mouth before Eren was kissing him again, harder this time, with more bites to Jean’s bottom lip and significantly more tongue. Jean wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. His past encounters were just that: Encounters. He had made out with other guys, sure, but there had never been that feeling of  _ love  _ pulsing through his veins. He had never experienced such strong emotions right alongside physical pleasure. Because, even if Eren was just holding him in place to kiss the breath out of him so far, this was a pleasure unlike anything else he had ever felt. 

   “Jean,” Eren said, breaking the kiss just long enough to speak; he knew that Jean would never say it without some sort of encouragement, so he had to ask the question. “Do you—do you wanna stay up here with me tonight?”

   Despite the feeling of embarrassed heat in his cheeks, he smiled. “That’s all I want,” Jean managed to say. “I, fuck, I… don’t  _ think _ I’m in love with you. I know I am. So, uh… staying with you… I’d really like that.”

   Eren kissed him again. “Mm. I figured,” he replied. “Here’s the thing. You know I’m not good at emotional stuff. You know I struggle to put my feelings into words, so I’m not gonna be able to pour my heart out to you without sounding like a dumbass. All I can do is tell you that you make me happy and that I… I can’t quite imagine going back to the way it was before you showed up. I don’t want you to ever leave my side.” Another kiss. “I can’t even begin to tell you everything I feel, so instead of doing that, I’m gonna  _ show  _ you what I feel. I’ll take good damn care of you.”

   Jean nodded like his  _ life _ depended on it. “Please do.”

   Jean’s previous encounters had never been anything particularly special, not even the time when he lost his virginity. With the way he had lived up until that point, he had always been a quick fuck for lonely guys who didn’t want anyone they knew to know that they were into dudes. He had been shoved against back-alley walls and bent over anything that could be used, held down on the grass and pinned into the corners of couches; up until that point, he had never known what it was like to be picked up and carried to a bed, to be showered in affection before even the first article of clothing—his shirt, naturally—was removed and thrown to God-knew-where. For once, he ached to be touched not because of mere physical stimulation, but because all he could think of in that moment was how much he  _ needed  _ Eren. This was the first time the person touching him actually mattered to him. The thought crossed his mind that it was stupid that he was so hopelessly turned on just by knowing that it was Eren exploring his body like that, but what was he gonna do, tell Eren to stop because it was  _ too _ nice and he couldn’t think? Fat chance. He couldn’t help but moan into the kiss, encouraging Eren to keep going. 

   And Jean decided right then and there that, while he couldn’t physically undo any of his previous sexual relations, they were all officially rendered null and void.  _ This _ , as far as he was concerned, was his first time. Because this time it felt  _ right _ in a way none of the others had _.  _ It felt right to have Eren’s weight on top of him until he sat up to get rid of all the layers of clothes he wore. It felt right for Eren to be the one coaxing him to lift his hips off the mattress so he could get Jean’s pants off. Fuck, it felt  _ so right _ for Eren’s bare skin to be pressed against his.

   For the longest time, Jean had thought that the infamous  _ nightstand drawer _ was a myth. He’d never actually been in anyone’s  _ bedroom _ , so how was he to know that people really  _ did _ keep that sort of thing there? Eren reaches over his nightstand and, sure enough, produced a few items from within the small drawer. Jean didn’t look too closely—the last thing he needed was to  _ see _ that stuff and then shut down because he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that this was happening—but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what they were. Knowing Eren, though, whatever liquid was in that small vial would be something different from the average person’s lube. He uncorked the vial with his teeth like a fucking madman, spat the cork out, and immediately went back to putting his lips on every inch of Jean’s skin. And while he was doing  _ that _ …

   Jean’s legs twitched when the cool liquid that had been in the vial spilled out over him. He was just a little bit too far gone for the sudden chill to put a damper on his arousal. The liquid landed on him just below the tip of his dick, flowing down along its length and sending a shiver up his spine. It kept going, down, down—rolling over his entrance and making his toes curl; how long had it been if he was already like this? The vial finally finished ridding itself of its contents and Eren tossed it away. Jean heard the glass break, not that he particularly  _ cared _ about the vial’s fate. 

   Eren smirked and ran the tips of his fingers down Jean’s dick, following the stream pattern of the liquid, grinning his ass off when Jean gasped at the touch. “You’re so pretty,” he said softly, not bothering to try to control where his eyes went. He wanted to see  _ all _ of it,  _ everything  _ that Jean had to offer. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.” The lube was just thick enough for some to stick to his fingers to properly spread it over Jean’s hole before it all had the chance to roll off onto the sheets. 

   Jean, despite his usual pride and accompanying shame at such actions, couldn’t help but spread his legs a little further. “Wh—What even is that? ‘S not like the regular stuff.” he gathered the breath to ask and say. The hand that Eren wasn’t using to try to get Jean to open up for him came up from Jean’s side to his chest. He had never been particularly sensitive there, but something about Eren’s touch drove him fucking  _ crazy.  _

   Eren presses a kiss to Jean’s collarbone, following it up with a little bite. “It’s from the fae. They hooked me up when we were there, always do. They always send a bunch home with me because they know I love this shit. It’s not that different from regular lube, actually. It just…”

   “Hm?”

   “It’s just supposed to sink in and make things more sensitive. Stays wet way longer, too. We never really talked about it, but the fae know sex.”

   “But h-how does that even work?”

   Eren shrugged slightly. “Dunno. Never bothered to look into it. I just love using it.” As Eren toyed with him—kissing Jean’s throat and running his free hand over every piece of skin he could touch and encouraging the fae’s lube to soak into Jean’s body—his muscles relaxed bit by bit until he was practically useless, just waiting for whatever Eren’s next move was. And Eren was no fool. He saw the faraway but desperate look on Jean’s face, felt his body falling into a total state of relaxation underneath his hands. As much as he wanted to go back in for another kiss, he couldn’t do it, not yet; he had to see this. Jean’s guard was down and there was no way that Eren wasn’t going to use that to his advantage. 

   He started to slip his finger inside, watching  _ joyfully _ as Jean’s face scrunched up and he bit his bottom lip. How long had it been? How long since Jean last got laid? He supposed it could have just been the lube doing its thing, but Eren was inclined to believe that Jean hadn’t gotten fucked in a while. Well, it didn’t matter  _ why _ he looked like that. All that mattered was that he  _ did.  _ When he figured it was damn well time, Eren added the second finger. 

   “Eren,” Jean said in a near whisper. 

   “What? That feel good?”

   Jean forced himself to open his eyes. Eren was staring straight at him with a look on his face that was both  _ incredibly  _ sexy and… a little bit scary. Like Eren absolutely meant it when he said that he wouldn’t let anyone else have Jean. Like he was enjoying this  _ far _ more than he let on. There was an intensity in Eren’s eyes that made Jean want to shy away, to cover himself up and hide; had anybody ever looked at him that way before? He was pretty sure that the answer was  _ no.  _ Fuck, it was embarrassing. How could Eren do it? How could he still act so casually when he had two fingers up Jean’s ass? It didn’t make sense. 

   Still, he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Feels—feels good.” Jean let out a long groan when Eren brushed against his prostate. An utterly  _ wicked _ grin spread across Eren’s face. Jean wasn’t quite sure what he had gotten himself into, but judging by that grin, he wasn’t gonna get out of it for a long time. 

 

—

 

   Oh,  _ God _ , this was the  _ best.  _ It was  _ unreal.  _

   Now, Eren had never been a stranger to the physical pleasures of life. He was fifteen when he first had sex—it had been with a girl a few months older than him, a girl who he distinctly remembered to have been from a conservative family that she mostly just wanted to rebel against. After that, well, he didn’t really keep track. He was always safe with the girls and  _ obviously  _ couldn’t get a dude knocked up, so what point would there be in keeping a list? It would be… an embarrassingly long list, he thought. He had been a bit of a mess after he hit the legal drinking age, that was for sure. The worst part about having a bunch of drunk sex was that he couldn’t remember if any of it was good or not. But he didn’t need to remember those partners. He didn’t need to remember  _ any _ of his partners. 

   Because this? Nothing could top this. 

   All the years Jean had spent being a drifter had, naturally, had some effects. His legs and back were  _ strong _ , much stronger than they ought to have been considering that he had a rather slim figure. He lived each day with a hard look in his eyes, regardless of where he was or who he was with, the kind of look that said,  _ Come on, then. Fuck with me. I dare you.  _ Jean, all in all, looked like a silent, serious kind of guy with a rotten attitude, the kind that should never be approached without due reason. But in that particular moment, none of those things seemed like they could possibly be true. 

   Because right then, Jean was a fucking  _ wreck.  _ All spread out underneath Eren like that, the manufactured appearance that Jean wore day in and day out had fallen away. He desperately grabbed at the sheets by his head, his hair clinging to his sweat-dampened forehead, tears in his eyes as he cried out Eren’s name over and over like a prayer; his legs—so fucking beautiful, Eren noticed—were about as far apart as he could get them in his attempt to make sure that Eren could get  _ just _ the right angle, and, fuck, his whole body jolted under each and every last one of Eren’s movements. And while the sight before him was enough to put Eren straight out of his mind, that wasn’t the only thing that kept his interest. Jean… well, Jean, bless him, was a screamer. Eren couldn’t get enough of those cries. There was another thing, too. Eren knew far better than to go all the way with someone who wasn’t properly prepared yet, so he had taken plenty of extra time to make sure that Jean was good and ready for him. Despite all of that effort, though, Jean was still so  _ tight _ around him _.  _ So fucking  _ good.  _

   Jean had already praised Eren for being, quote,  _ so fucking thick.  _ Normally Eren was concerned about that kind of thing; when people said they liked guys with big dicks, they usually meant in terms of length, not thickness. He was pretty average in the former category, but the latter… it intimidated people sometimes. Not Jean, though. He didn’t hesitate to tell Eren how much he wanted it, how great it would feel. Jean had been right about that. For the first time in pretty much forever, Eren wasn’t quite as concerned by the possibility of his accidentally hurting his partner. Jean made it  _ perfectly  _ clear that this was just what he had always hoped it would be like. Even if Jean was sore as fuck the next day, he wouldn’t be regretting this.

   Eren decided that it would probably be best to not mention to Jean how much noise he made. It was fucking hot,  _ obviously _ , but he didn’t want to risk embarrassing him. He probably wouldn’t want a recap, especially when it went like,  _ Eren! Fuck, fuck, aah, Eren, please, fuck, Eren, Eren! P-Please, please please please, ah! Fuck, I, ah, oh fuck oh Eren, shit, E-Eren! I—I’m, aaah, ah, fuck, I’m gonna—I—oh, fuck, Eren, I’m gonna—! _

   He trailed off into a scream as he came, his body tensing up and his thighs trembling, the scream dying quickly and being replaced by desperate shaky gasps for breath for the third time that night. As it turned out, Jean had a  _ lot _ of energy. After his first orgasm, Eren had figured that maybe he came hard enough to go right the fuck to sleep; it wasn’t that Eren didn’t  _ want _ to keep going—he  _ really _ didn’t want to stop, actually—it was just that he wasn’t used to having a partner who  _ kept on _ wanting more. He couldn’t remember any of his partners being so… enthusiastic. When Jean practically begged him to do it again, Eren was utterly  _ thrilled.  _ And then, after that second time, Jean begged for more once again. So there they were, Jean’s muscles relaxing one by one as the orgasm faded, leaving him even more of a mess than he had been a few minutes ago. 

   Eren stopped moving to let Jean rest. His heart hammered in his chest. He was used to a lot of things, but sex like this just wasn’t one of them. Truth be told, he had spent a long time… training himself, so to speak. It had been hard, definitely, but he had taught himself to keep himself from coming for as long as possible. He had broken almost immediately after Jean first came, thinking that was probably the end of it. Now that he knew it wasn’t, all that time he had spent being miserable was totally worth it. Seeing Jean like that… it was  _ heavenly.  _ All he wanted was to make Jean feel good. 

   He leaned down to kiss Jean’s forehead. “You—You good?” he asked. “Or are you not done yet?”

   Jean moaned lightly. “I—I…”

   Eren reached down to take Jean’s cock into his hand, slowly moving up and down the shaft and watching Jean’s reactions as he stroked him like that. “Hm? Which is it? I’ve got another round in me if that’s what you want.”

   “Please, fuck, that’s what I—”

   Still buried inside of him, Eren gave a little thrust. Jean gasped sharply and arched off the bed; Eren hadn’t done it like this yet, but Jean supposed it wasn’t much of a surprise considering that bold nature of his. Jean had never gone straight from one round to the next without taking at least a couple minutes’ break. While Jean’s body screamed at him to get away from that overstimulation, he couldn’t bring himself to ask Eren to wait for even a second. 

   Eren grinned. Thank  _ fuck.  _ Eren needed this. He needed to come again and he wasn’t going to until he had wrung one more out of Jean and, by God, if this was how he was gonna get there,  _ good.  _ There was a particular satisfaction that came with seeing Jean that way, his toes curled and his back arched and his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth hanging open as he struggled to keep himself sane under Eren’s—fuck, what was the word? Onslaught, maybe? He didn’t know. He could hardly think. He couldn’t, not as long as that bizarre combination of burning pain and sparking pleasure continued. His blood was on fire, electricity flaring in his veins, leaving him practically helpless. There was nothing else in the world that mattered. 

   Jean couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take it and he  _ loved it.  _ The pain faded and arousal reignited itself and Eren felt  _ so good _ inside of him that he couldn’t entertain any other thoughts. Eren slammed into him  _ again _ and  _ again _ and Jean was aware that he was screaming and he heard Eren saying some shit like,  _ Yeah, you like that, don’t you? Fuck, babe, you have no idea what you’re doin’ to me.  _

   How much time passed? Neither of them knew, neither of them had any  _ idea.  _ Time was irrelevant. It didn’t matter how long they were like that. It only mattered that they spent that time  _ together _ . Well, and that it ended in that  _ perfect  _ release, but, y’know. Neither of them were so callous to admit to that being one of their primary motivations when it was just their first night together. 

   When all was said and done, Eren held Jean in his arms. The last remnants of cold winter wind broke against the windows and howled through the still-bare trees, but in that tower, in that room, in that soft bed, under a mountain of Eren’s big fluffy blankets and curled up against Eren so closely, Jean was the warmest he’d ever been. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more........ one more chapter after this oh dear


	11. Mage's Assistant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa visits. Spring starts to set in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up a bit shorter than I meant for it to as the final chapter but I hope y'all enjoy it a bit anyway ;u;

   Mikasa sat down at her usual place at the dining room table, crossing her ankles and folding her hands together on the tabletop. Something had changed while she was gone, she just wasn’t sure  _ what.  _ When Armin made a tiny little whimpering noise, she knew that he felt it too; there had been a shift in the energy of the tower, an addition of  _ something  _ that changed  _ everything.  _ Neither of the boys gave any real indication as to what that thing was, though. Eren was sitting in his chair, blabbering on about how nice their break had been but how he was actually pretty excited about their next job, a stupid grin on his face as he did so. Was there a cute girl that he was going to work for, maybe? Jean was just about as quiet as he usually was, save for maybe a bit of humming as he prepared their meal. Had he slept particularly well? Had a good dream or two? Or maybe… maybe he had, somehow or another, fallen in love while Mikasa and Armin were gone?

   She gasped suddenly and loudly when the pieces clicked together. “ _ You! _ ” she yelled to neither of them in particular. Eren fell silent and his eyebrows rose in surprise; Jean stopped what he was doing and looked over his shoulder, regardless of the jam dripping off of the butter knife he held. “ _ What did you do? _ ” she demanded. “Did you two—God, did you two hook up while we were up north?”

   The boys looked at each other, not saying a word or making any movements until Jean shrugged and turned his attention back to preparing their meal. Eren looked back to Mikasa and said, “Yeah. I think we’re like… a  _ thing _ now. Jean, are we a thing?”

   Jean shifted his weight to one leg. “I mean, I kinda figured we were. If you don’t  _ want _ to be a thing—”

   “—No, no, that’s not what I meant,” Eren interrupted. “Just makin’ sure we’re on the same page here. So, yeah, we’re a  _ thing _ .”

   Mikasa suddenly slumped forward, purposefully banging her head on the table. “Don’t make a sound, Armin. Don’t you  _ dare. _ ”

   “The fuck?” Eren asked. 

   “I owe him a full-course meal next time he decides it’s okay to go out in human form,” she said. “We made a bet on the way north. I bet that you guys wouldn’t get together while we were gone, that it was too soon. Armin bet that you would.”

   “ _ Seriously _ ?” Eren sighed. “You two took  _ bets _ on my love life?”

   “Eren,” she said, “there’s so much gay tension between you two that I feel like it’ll break if I  _ breathe the same air _ as you.”

   Eren rolled his eyes. “Fuck you.”

   “Yeah, yeah,” she said as she raised her head. “But don’t act like a saint, Eren. You and Jean take bets on Annie and I  _ all the time _ .”

   Eren was about to make some kind of excuse, something about how it was different because they bet on if the girls would kill each other instead of if they would hook up or not, but he was interrupted by Jean’s laughter. He looked up as Jean made his way across the room, putting a plate in front of Mikasa, Eren, and at his own place at the table. “She’s right,” he said. “By the way, is she still alive?”

   Mikasa stuck her tongue out at him. “Yes, she was perfectly alive as of the last time I saw her.”

   “Damn,” Eren muttered. 

   Jean grinned. “Pay up, dickwad.”

   Eren sighed dramatically. “Yeah, yeah. I know. One large cinnamon roll from Toffee’s comin’ right up.”

   “Thank youuu,” Jean said as he sat down. “God, I don’t know how I survived before I met that bakery.”

   “You guys bet on my murderous tendencies using baked goods?” Mikasa asked. When they both nodded, she looked down at where Armin sat on the floor. “Hey, any chance we could change the arrangement to just be a couple baked goods instead of the whole buffet?”

   Armin got up and left the room. 

   Eren burst into laughter, eventually managing to say, “I guess that’s a  _ no _ .”

 

—

 

   Jean took a deep breath. Fresh spring air met him from the other side of each window he opened. It was April, a solid six months since he had shown up on Eren’s doorstep with a  _ help wanted _ flyer shoved into his coat pocket. He put his hands on the windowsill and leaned out a little, feeling the warm breeze on his face. The flowers around the tower grounds were starting to bloom. It would just be a couple more weeks, he thought, before they’d all be in full bloom and they’d be off to go visit the fae. The baby they had helped was about an adult by now and, since they had promised to visit her when she was grown, they were planning their next trip out there.

   He sighed happily and started towards the stairs. Eren was up there somewhere, working on an… otter repellent? He had said that the fae had a problem with otters in the harvesting and gathering season, something about how they often ended up near a river with a large otter population and that the otters occasionally attacked and  _ ate _ the fae. Jean hadn’t been aware that otters ate anything other than fish, but he was inclined to believe it. The fae were tiny little bitches, after all.

   “Hey, Eren?” he called as he came up the stairs toward the workshop. 

   “Yeah?” Eren replied. “What’s up?”

   Jean leaned against the doorframe to watch what Eren was doing. “How’s the otter repellent goin’?”

   Eren shrugged as he continued to mix the liquid in the cauldron. It gave off a light steam, and when Jean actually got a look at it, it was a bright blue color. “I dunno if it’ll actually work,” Eren said, “but it’s goin’ pretty well. You were right, though. We gotta get a new cauldron. The short leg on this thing is gonna be the death of me. I bumped into it and the whole thing almost fell. Would've made a fuckload of a mess.”

   “Told you,” Jean replied with a grin. “You gotta listen to me more often.”

   “Yeah, yeah. Whatever. We’re goin’ cauldron shopping whenever we get home from the trip.” Eren yawned. “Hey, could you bring me the temperature gauge from over there? On the desk with all my other shit.”

   Being the good assistant-slash-boyfriend that he was, Jean nodded and made his way over to the desk where Eren was currently storing all his shit. The temperature gauge wasn’t much to look at; a long, metal spike with a round gauge at the top was, naturally, meant to be useful, not pretty. He found it underneath a washcloth Eren had been using to wipe his hands during the potion-making process. Some of the blue liquid had transferred from the cloth to the glass that protected the gauge.

   He sighed and used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the sticky liquid off the glass. When he was done, the glass was clean enough for him to see his reflection looking back at him.

   And then it smiled and said, “Well, damn. Good for you.”

   Jean almost dropped the temperature gauge. He managed to keep his hold on it, though, and quickly passed it to Eren while muttering that he’d be right back, he just needed to go to the bathroom real quick. He locked the bathroom door behind him and stared hard into the mirror on the wall, demanding, “How are you still here?”

   The reflection shrugged. “Eren burned away the effects of  _ his potion _ , which, I mean,  _ obviously _ knocked me on my ass for awhile. Do you have any idea how boring my life has been? Ever since that day, I’ve been tagging along with you, seeing you try to grow up and move on from the attack. Seeing you run. Seeing you avoid dealing with things like an adult. But there was nothing I could do. I was always buried deep down inside, y’know? Forced to just  _ watch _ as you lived life as a fucking coward.”

   Since that day? Move on from the attack?

   “Your magic didn’t  _ disappear _ , dumbass. It  _ changed _ . It all turned into  _ me _ . Oh, don’t look at me like that. Maybe I could’ve told you this before, but, really, why would I rob myself of all that fun after being cooped up for so long? I don’t know what the fuck was in that potion bottle you broke, but I guess that whatever it was finally gave us the push we needed for me to be able to talk to you. When Eren purged it, I ended up living the same miserable fucking way I’d been living before you fucked with that stuff.”

   “ _ How the fuck are you still here? _ ” Jean demanded again. He didn’t really want to  _ believe _ what he was hearing—or what he was seeing, because that also sucked—but it… kinda made sense. It had always seemed strange that magic could be completely and utterly beaten out of someone, but the idea that it could be changed by some kind of traumatic event was surprisingly reasonable. Trauma changed people. If he had been subjected to trauma, which he obviously had, it wasn’t unrealistic to think that the magic that had always been a part of him hadn’t completely left him, but had taken on a different form instead. 

   Somehow, that pissed him off even more than the idea that the reflection was a part of him rather than having come straight from a bottle of God-knew-what that Eren had been brewing.

   “I don’t have an answer for that one, alright? I shouldn’t be here. I’d given up, y’know. Figured I’d never get to talk to you again. I’m gonna go ahead and blame him, alright? I bet being around him and his magic-y bullshit all the time has just… fucked you up. Maybe it’s been soaking in through your skin the way that first potion did. How should I know? But I guess you did alright without me, didn’t you? I was so  _ sure _ that you’d never be able to stand up for yourself and just fucking tell him how you felt if you didn’t have me around to pressure you into doing it. I mean,  _ damn _ . You confessed  _ and _ got fucked all in the same night. Never thought I’d see that.”

   Oh, lord.

   “Lighten up. You proved me wrong, okay? You did it. I didn’t think you’d be able to do it, but you did. You told him, and he said that he felt the same—you know what, I’m not gonna get into a recap. You were  _ there _ . Still, you’ve done  _ something _ right if he still wants you around. I was fully prepared for him to reject you and kick your ass out as soon as the last snow passed. So what are you gonna do now? You  _ obviously _ went and got ridiculously attached to that dickwad, so I’m assuming we’re just gonna fuckin’ stay here until we either die or get kicked out. I don’t really care. I wanna know if you’re gonna go running and crying to him, groaning about how his little  _ procedure  _ didn’t actually do everything he said and get rid of me for good. Or maybe you’ll keep this our little secret and I can keep talking to you when I see fit. Do  _ not _ give me that face, Jean. I’m  _ you _ , motherfucker. I am a part of you. You and I? We’re in this together. You aren’t gonna get rid of me. I mean, if Eren going in and  _ burning _ shit didn’t get rid of me, nothing will.”

   Jean sighed, slumping forward with his forehead pressed to the mirror. “I hate you,” he said. “I hate you so much.”

   “Of course you do.”

   “I’m not half as much of a dick as you are. Don’t try to tell me that you’re me, alright?”

   “You are this much of a dick, though. You’re a huge dick to yourself. You always have been. You hate me because I actually say the things that you don’t want to admit to yourself. It pisses you off that I can say that you’re cowardly for running all the time when you can’t say it. I’m your  _ reflection _ , remember? I get to show you all of the things you don’t want to see.”

   “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t go back up there and tell Eren to purge my entire fucking system of everything that isn’t organic once and for all.”

   “Because you need me. You need someone to call you out on your bullshit. You need someone who can look you in the eye and say that you’re being a weak fucking bitch when you try to run from things instead of sugarcoating it and convincing you that it’s okay to try to protect yourself that way. Y’know, basically, you need someone who sees you for you, bullshit and all. I’m on your side. You’d know that if you’d pull your head out of your ass and just look at your fucking flaws like a regular person.”

   Jean sighed. “You… I really hate you. I should get rid of you.”

   “Will you, though?” It must’ve known that the answer was  _ not yet _ , based on the self-satisfied noise it made. “I really do want to help you get better. Stop being an asshole and a coward and all that shit. I know, you’ve gotten a bit better since you and Eren finally hooked up, but don’t act like you aren’t still a mess.”

   There was a knock at the door. “Jean?” Eren asked. “You alright in there? I’m done fixing the potion if you’ll please come help me bottle it up.”

   He looked away from the mirror. “Yeah, I’ll be right there. I’m okay.” He spared one more irritated glance at his reflection. He sighed once more, then went out to Eren and headed back upstairs with him. He wasn’t sure if his reflection was worth trusting or how long he’d last before he had another physical outburst because of it like he had at the water that time, but… he got the feeling that it might be a bit harder to get rid of if he decided to try. For now, he’d bide his time. See what it had to say. Keep living his life the way he had learned to—going to sleep and waking up next to Eren, making breakfast in the morning, doing all he could to help out with Eren’s work, and, hell, just being  _ happy _ . Feeling secure. Having a place to stay instead of hopping from town to town, running away from something he couldn’t properly identify even if he tried.

   Eren kissed Jean before they got to work on bottling that stupid otter repellent, and even though the project he was about to help Eren with was fucking ridiculous, Jean was pretty sure that this was the most normal he’d felt in a long time. He almost laughed at himself; there he was, bottling up otter repellent for the fae, six months after seriously questioning his decision to work with Shiganshina’s mage after he heard what happened to the last person who worked with Eren. He had been so worried that day, wondering if he’d even  _ survive _ with his sanity intact. And now he was in a serious loving relationship and had a home and was so happy it was ridiculous.

   As it turned out, being a mage’s assistant wasn’t so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he'll probably be fine
> 
>  
> 
> SERIOUSLY THOUGH he will be!!! I know I went kinda... ambiguous? with the ending here but I want y'all to know that Jean and his lil reflection eventually get on the same page and they're totally bros! And Eren and Jean keep doing the gay for forever because, like, what else would I do? Break them up? lol who do y'all think I am  
> The point is I promise this is a good end and y'all are more than welcome to come in the comments here and talk about scenarios relating to the events of and after this ending c':

**Author's Note:**

> As per usual, feel free to come visit me on Twitter! https://twitter.com/alifeinpastels


End file.
